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What are differences between "Des" and "Darum"? Apparently they both mean "therefore", do they?

Here are some contexts:

"Meine Mutter war eine Wienerin, D'RUM habe ich Wien so gern."

"DES bin ich froh." (Weihnachtslied.)

Are they interchangeable? Or do Germans use one in some contexts and the other in other contexts?

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    Do you mean deswegen oder deshalb? des ist just the genitive singular of der/das. Or in Viennese "des" instead of "dies"/"das" (demonstrative pronoun)
    – splattne
    Dec 9, 2011 at 21:55
  • @splattne: Yes, I believe "des" is short for "deswegen" or "deshalb" in this context. But look at my example. You probably know the whole song.
    – Tom Au
    Dec 9, 2011 at 21:58

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IMHO, in your example "des" is not used as a short form "deshalb" or "deswegen", but as a synonym to "dessen".

Here is a bit more of the actual songtext:

Als ich bei meinen Schafen wacht
Ein Engel mir die Botschaft bracht.
Des bin ich froh, bin ich froh,
Froh, froh, froh, o, o, o!

Duden uses another example:

Des (dessen) bin ich sicher

So I would say in this case it's used as the genitive singular, standing for "die vom Engel überbrachte Botschaft".

Also you should keep in mind, that this is quite an old song (written around 1600) and that language is constantly changing. As far as I know, this figure of speech isn't commonly used anymore.

To answer the question if "darum", "deswegen" and "deshalb" are interchangeable, the Duden lists them as synonyms. I wouldn't know about a case where these three words could not be replaced by one another.

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    I fully agree with this answer, except that "des" does not refer specifically to "Botschaft" but to the whole event of meeting the angel and getting the message.
    – Phira
    Dec 10, 2011 at 14:07

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