Fascinating - words can *sound* convincingly like English without being English.
— Incunabula (@incunabula) October 3, 2022
Italian singer Adriano Celentano released his hit song "Prisencolinensinainciusol" in 1972, written to mimic the way English sounds to non-English speakers, despite being almost entirely nonsense. pic.twitter.com/tnLb7vDyLV
October 3, 2022
Speaking of the sound of American speech....
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I think it's more about the twanginess in his voice...
1972? That is really amazingly ahead of its time.
That's the way a lot of English language songs sound to me.
"Prisencolinensinainciusol" looks like a transcription of something Biden said.
I understood exactly what was being said.
Conversely, the video is what I imagine daily life in Italy to look like.
Celentano canta, balle e spiega qui
It's a shame that Sid Caesar didn't put his own act to music.
It's also a shame that Celentano's next single "Trunalimunumaprzure" didn't do as well.
In Amsterdam in 1971, could swear the radio DJs were speaking English but could not understand them.
That's how most rock songs sound to me.
Hilarious though.
Back in the 1960-70s, my father used to sing like that to make fun of rock music where you can't understand the lyrics.
In "Surely You're Joking", Feynman relates how he fooled people into thinking he was speaking Italian, just with accent and gesture. He points out that some may have explained their failure to quite understand him, by thinking he was speaking with one of many provincial accents.
Needs to be counter-weighted by Bill Hader doing Vinny Veddecci, his Italian talks how host, on SNL.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI3eiqrWEzU
This sounds like Bob Dylan meets Nirvana.
It's better in color with babes.
If you do this with Spanish or Chinese you are racist.
I love k-pop, even though (most of) the words are all gibberish*; but the refrains are (mostly) in english.. because english (american english) is THE LANGUAGE of rock and roll.
groups (Famous Groups!) like ABBA and The Beatles weren't able to converse in any understandable language**, but they sure could (and DID) sing in american english
gibberish* well, maybe they're korean.. I wouldn't know or care
any understandable language** see footnote above, and find corollary
Hilarious video. Lemme try doing some Italian that way:
Meo troubadid seo
Volubadid geo,
Ber as ton cheo
Semi semi sou
(Maybe more Spanish. Hard to say.)
I love that. Wasn't much on the radio in 1972 sounding like that. I wish there was.
Those are the exact words I hear in any Dylan song… {ducks to avoid thrown objects}
It’s not what you say: it’s how you say it. That’s a’ Merican .
Jabberwocky was 100 years earlier.
Gee......Rap music for white people.
If you were a space alien, the tell that this might be fake Am-English is that so many lines end in a vowel, or a nasalized consonant (n, m, ng); no line ends hard-stopped by a d, t, p, or k sound -- until the final "All right!" The endings we do hear are a hard-to-break habit for native and accustomed Italian speakers.
Not definite proof, but enough to raise space alien eyebrows.
Is this how Fetterman feels?
Exactly April. As I recall life in the late '60s and early '70s felt like we were living in the future.
See also the great Clark Terry’s “Mumbles,” (1965). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbtPTHMOY-s
Also enjoyable the way they mimic dancing.
To me, it sounds German. But English is a Germanic language.
That could also pass for Dutch.
Here's a modern dance version with Robert Bolle and a hat tip to Michael Jackson
https://youtu.be/Xn_OLnMriRg
Dutch sounds a lot like English with randomly chosen sounds and syllables chopped out and thrown away or moved to different places.
Sid Caesar Performing in Four Different Languages
Sid didn't speak any of them, but he did pepper his routine with foreign words and proper names, so it wasn't all just in the gestures, accent, rhythm, and intonation. It's a great act anyway, and slipping the familiar names in got the laughs.
There was another comedian who said he could imitate Japanese by pretending to be cold, constipated, and confused.
Ann Althouse said...
"Prisencolinensinainciusol" looks like a transcription of something Biden said.
10/3/22, 9:39 AM
Thanks for the laugh. I almost spit out my tea!!
This sounds like most television and movie (watched on television) dialogue to me.
I generally get the gist of what's going on, I just miss some of the subtleties, but that's ok. It's all mind numbing distraction anyway.
Eddie Veder learned a few tricks from this guy.
that song is hilarious. My grown daughter can sing in fake french. Some people have asked her when she learned french. hahaha
that song is hilarious. My grown daughter can sing in fake french. Some people have asked her when she learned french. hahaha
The dude went on to write the WKRP closing song.
Which shows that people respond to the music and the beat more than the lyrics. You could put Mein Kampf or the speeches of Louis Farrakhan to music and people would happily sing it.
Feynman relates how he fooled people into thinking he was speaking Italian, just with accent and gesture.
Peter Griffin once did that on Family Guy, after he grew a mustache.
https://youtu.be/R4fw3umsnwY
The story I heard about this song was that at that time Italians had a voracious appetite for American music. And this song becoming a hit proved it.
>>That could also pass for Dutch
Good butter and good cheese/Is good English and good Friese
Then there's always "Mots d'Heure: Gousses, Rames," which is a hoot if you're at least moderately proficient in French.
--gpm
The ancient Greeks called non-Greeks 'barbarians' because their language sounded like 'bar-bar' (nonsense syllables).
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