I honestly never thought about it that way. It wasn’t sung to me when I was little and I only know it from people who misunderstood it. But it’s not closer to “when”. It’s the default for both. You can disambiguate it to “falls” or “sobald” but “wenn” is in both contexts the most common word.
I can’t argue with that, because the German “wenn” is definitely more ambiguous than the English “when”, but since it’s a lullaby, you kinda have to assume that perhaps it’s leaning more on the positive side, because who on earth would want their baby to die in their sleep?
If Germans really were this cruel, they would have been wiped off the face of the earth a long time ago.
because who on earth would want their baby to die in their sleep?
actually, this exact thought was really calming to me when i was a kid (yes, the song was sung to me too):
if i die, at least i die in my sleep, where i wouldn’t really be aware of it anyways, so i don’t have to care about it. it’s like, every human has to die sometime, but at least it can be in your sleep. and there’s nothing you can do about it either, so you don’t have to worry about it.
I honestly never thought about it that way. It wasn’t sung to me when I was little and I only know it from people who misunderstood it. But it’s not closer to “when”. It’s the default for both. You can disambiguate it to “falls” or “sobald” but “wenn” is in both contexts the most common word.
I can’t argue with that, because the German “wenn” is definitely more ambiguous than the English “when”, but since it’s a lullaby, you kinda have to assume that perhaps it’s leaning more on the positive side, because who on earth would want their baby to die in their sleep?
If Germans really were this cruel, they would have been wiped off the face of the earth a long time ago.
actually, this exact thought was really calming to me when i was a kid (yes, the song was sung to me too):
if i die, at least i die in my sleep, where i wouldn’t really be aware of it anyways, so i don’t have to care about it. it’s like, every human has to die sometime, but at least it can be in your sleep. and there’s nothing you can do about it either, so you don’t have to worry about it.