99 Luftballons by Nena (Advanced): Verse 2

💬 When darum starts the sentence, the verb comes next: Darum schickte .... You can swap in other time or reason words the same way: Dann ging er, Deshalb blieb sie.

💬 'ne is a spoken short form of eine. You'll hear this kind of clipping a lot in songs and casual speech, like 'nen for einen.

💬 hinterher often means after it/them in the sense of chasing or following, not just later. For example: Die Polizei fuhr ihm hinterher.

💬 'ne is casual spoken German for eine, so this sounds colloquial right away. hinterher here means after it/them in a chasing sense: jemandem hinterherschicken = send something after someone.

💬 With another verb like geben, German uses zu: Alarm zu geben = to raise the alarm. You'll see the same pattern in zu gehen, zu helfen, zu verstehen.

💬 wenn's is just the spoken contraction of wenn es. wär is a shortened spoken form of wäre, common in songs and everyday speech.

💬 wenn's is a contraction of wenn es, and wär is a casual short form of wäre. German songs often compress little words like this, but you'll hear the same thing in normal speech too.

💬 war'n is a spoken or written-down-short form of waren. Songs often drop the e like this, just as ist's stands for ist es.

💬 am is the contraction of an dem. You'll see it all the time in place phrases like am Bahnhof, am Fenster, am Horizont.

💬 war'n is the shortened spoken form of waren, very common in lyrics and casual speech. am is also a contraction: an dem.