An Italian Song That Sounds Like English But Is Nonsense

373 点作者 idiocratic超过 7 年前

49 条评论

seer超过 7 年前

Hah several years back in my country (Bulgaria) there was a woman in our “Music Idol” tv show that tried to perform Mariah Carey’s “Without You”, but didn’t know a word of english [1]. And not knowing english is something bulgarians like to laugh at - she became a country wide sensation, shown in probably every comedy show and even the news, as well as earned herself multiple covers on youtube. At some point there was even a talk show in france that had Mariah as a guest, and they showed her that video hoping for a reaction [2] :-D But I agree with Mariah’s answer - you have to be reaaly brave to go on stage before the whole country and sing by trying to come up with words in a language you don’t understand.Weirdly enough, when researching this I realized that “singing Without You with nonsence english” Is a thing in many different countries. I’d like to think we started it all![1]<a href="https://youtu.be/yqVVv97pKGk" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/yqVVv97pKGk</a>[2]<a href="https://youtu.be/xbcp8wZZyII" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/xbcp8wZZyII</a>

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vesinisa超过 7 年前

There's actually a similar rock song from Finland recorded in 1974: <a href="https://youtu.be/yGCviZAdxeY" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/yGCviZAdxeY</a>In this case, the lyrics are actual English words, but the verses they form are just total gibberish: <a href="https://genius.com/Hurriganes-get-on-lyrics" rel="nofollow">https://genius.com/Hurriganes-get-on-lyrics</a>It's a pretty sweet rock piece and really famous in Finland. The recording was supposed to be a 'demo' and the gibberish lyrics replaced later with actual lyrics by someone who could English (the drummer/singer here, Remu Aaltonen, could not). But the band thought the demo good enough and decided to release it anyway on their next album. The rest is Finnish rock history.

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praptak超过 7 年前

Vaguely related, a text that is both Polish and English. Does not make much sense in either language but is grammatically correct. The author is Stanisław Barańczak, who specialized in similar texts."Ten pies... i owe forty... a lot much? To handle Buddy! Stale pies, but i brew, stale... Ale, no – stare my windy, fury win... One – to ten sam stale pies! Wanna? Piece? A top ten list, pal go! I won!"

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tomcooks超过 7 年前

Italy's fascination for the USA is the result of years of cultural (and physical) imperialism. This song and a number of different cultural acts (such as the famous "Americano" song [0], the Paninari movement in Milan during the 80's [1] and obviously the whole Spaghetti Western movies genre) are the direct result of this.The root cause of this, in my opinion, is the huge amount of CIA money that has been poured into Italian government, to make sure they wouldn't join USSR during the cold war.[2]I suggest watching "An american in Rome" with Alberto Sordi to have a clear example of the discrepancies between wealthy American _visitors_ and the local poorer population. It describes the story of a local Roman man infatuated with the whole American dream (short sub-eng part here [3])[0] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikZgUHJys2s" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikZgUHJys2s</a> [1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paninaro" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paninaro</a> [2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Italy" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Italy</a> [3] <a href="https://youtu.be/ikZgUHJys2s?t=86" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/ikZgUHJys2s?t=86</a>

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PakG1超过 7 年前

Russell Peters is fantastic at this in his comedy routines. He'll make a joke about some culture and pretend to speak their language, but it'll actually all be gibberish. My friend's family has a Hong Kong background. Friend was watching a Russell Peters show one day and the guy was making jokes about what he experienced in Hong Kong. Friend's mother walked by as Peters said something in his made-up Cantonese. She looked at the TV confused because it sounded like Cantonese, but she didn't understand any of it. Then she laughed. :)

dennisvennink超过 7 年前

There’s an entire genre from the 80s called Italo Disco that contains unintelligible English lyrics. It’s very charming in a way (and is excellent music to listen to while programming).

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HipstaJules超过 7 年前

Entering HN and seeing Celentano in homepage. What a time to be alive.

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jpatokal超过 7 年前

Internet personality Saara turned speaking fake languages into a career with this amazing little clip: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybcvlxivscw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybcvlxivscw</a>And her pitch-perfect imitation of 14 different musical genres is equally amazing: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybcvlxivscw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybcvlxivscw</a>

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wenc超过 7 年前

There's a clip that went viral a while ago where a girl was essentially spouting gibberish in various languages, but it sounded like she was speaking those languages!What Languages Sound Like to Foreigners <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybcvlxivscw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybcvlxivscw</a>

asymmetric超过 7 年前

Another classic from around the same time is Gigi Proietti's sketch[1] where he pretends to speak American English. It's hilarious.[1]: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO4EkyRNWww" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO4EkyRNWww</a>

nhebb超过 7 年前

To my ears, Elton John has made an entire career out of doing this.

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b1daly超过 7 年前

On a related subject, this one of my favorite presentations about audio perception. It’s about the perception of words in backwards music. It blew my miiind...<a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FcI8z-HoKPY" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FcI8z-HoKPY</a>

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carc1n0gen超过 7 年前

I've always had this problem where I can't quite hear the words in even the clearest and most known songs. Other people tell me how obvious the words were. So this song was a nightmare to hear for the first time. At least this time it's not my fault.

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pcrh超过 7 年前

In the same vein there is the famous cover of Mariah Carey's "Without You" by Valentin Hasan, known as "Ken Lee":<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQt-h753jHI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQt-h753jHI</a>

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tyingq超过 7 年前

There's a persistent rumor that "Scorpions", a German heavy metal band from the 80's[1] didn't really know English, but managed several top 10 US hit songs just by learning it phoenetically.[1] <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorpions_(band)" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorpions_(band)</a>

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foota超过 7 年前

This is brilliant. It's like one of those visual machine learning tricks where they put slight patterns in something to fool the recognizer.

fauigerzigerk超过 7 年前

I wonder if it's improvised or scripted. At least the choir part must be scripted, but the rest of the song seems like an awfully long sequence of arbitrary nonsense to memorise.It's not impossible though. When I was 5 years old, I used to listen to one particular record by Victor Jara about three times a day. I didn't know a word of Spanish, but I could recite something resembling those lyrics from start to finish.After learning a bit of Spanish decades later, I listened to that record again. Imagine my utter confusion when the words I thought I had remembered turned out to be not words but arbitrary sequences of sounds unrelated to word boundaries :)

zawerf超过 7 年前

Along the same vein, there's a skit done entirely using fake english: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt4Dfa4fOEY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt4Dfa4fOEY</a>

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whoisjuan超过 7 年前

For anyone who doesn't want to read here is the song: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8</a>

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IgorPartola超过 7 年前

There is a song by a Russian band released in 1992 where it was long speculated that the lyrics were supposed to be an imitation of American English. Apparently they were not, but give it a listen:<a href="https://youtu.be/xutpxia3Qkc" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/xutpxia3Qkc</a>For something even less serious, check out how to speak any language in three steps: <a href="https://youtu.be/s5qlu4vnCXE" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/s5qlu4vnCXE</a>

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wldcordeiro超过 7 年前

Well this was practically a meme like nearly ten years ago. Interesting to get a story behind it.

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jdright超过 7 年前

Interesting enough, for a non-english (e.g. I and my wife) speaker, my wife thought I was listening to Pink Floyd's Another Brick In The Wall!At first I couldn't connect the two, but then I "changed" my mind to my native language and I can see a lot of similarities in the lyrics too.This was a really weird moment... :)<a href="https://youtu.be/YR5ApYxkU-U?list=RDYR5ApYxkU-U&t=237" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/YR5ApYxkU-U?list=RDYR5ApYxkU-U&t=237</a>

simonebrunozzi超过 7 年前

This is a song by Adriano Celentano, a very well known celebrity in Italy. He's a multi-faceted artist (now in his 80s), and his work has spanned three generations of Italians.He's nicknamed "molleggiato" ("springy", or with good suspensions), and if you observe how he dances, you can immediately see why.I thought this little context could be helpful for non Italians.

fellellor超过 7 年前

I think something vaguely similar is happening in the Benny lava song (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdyC1BrQd6g" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdyC1BrQd6g</a>).Though the song is coherent in Tamil, the bad audio makes the whole thing hilarious for someone who can't understand the language.

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danidiaz超过 7 年前

Reminds me of the "dream of the mayor" sequence in the classic Spanish film "Welcome Mr. Marshall", during which the aforementioned character imagines himself as the hero of a western: <a href="https://youtu.be/0reKaJTs4k8?t=30" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/0reKaJTs4k8?t=30</a>

lordnacho超过 7 年前

Icelandic Sigur Rós do songs with vocals that sound emotive but don't actually mean anything:<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAYb8ZyjzD0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAYb8ZyjzD0</a>Verified by an Icelandic friend.

inflagranti超过 7 年前

Here's a classic German one where a group of comedians pretend to be the 'most disgusting' Finish band, singing Finish gibberish mixed in with mostly proper English and some random German words like 'Müntefering' (a German politician) to round it all up: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWYHfjMIY8w" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWYHfjMIY8w</a>The brilliance is they record a whole music video just for an elaborate prank on the poor presenter by playing this supposedly Finish superstars acting extremly obnoxiously and drinking beer in the studio...

Stratoscope超过 7 年前

The first time I saw this song on YouTube, it was a very different version. Same music, but different video, in black and white and more of a large scale dance number, not like the schoolroom theme from the video in this article.Here is a mix that starts with the color schoolroom version, and then at 3:30 cuts to the older version:<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G96luhHhxnI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G96luhHhxnI</a>I wonder if anyone has a link to that old black and white version? I don't seem to find it any more and would be curious to see it again. Thanks!

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anonu超过 7 年前

I was in cab in Napoli once and noticed that the driver was drumming his fingers to the beat of one of the latest American pop songs playing over the radio. However, he couldn't speak a word of English. I thought this a bit curious.However, the article frames it in context for me. It seems like Italian music has tried to pick up on the beats and sounds of American music, so even if the language itself was foreign the music was not.

Hvaara超过 7 年前

Reminds me of the Dutch hip hop song Watskeburt?! by De Jeugd van Tegenwoordi. Someone made Norwegian subtitles for this as if the song was in Norwegian, and it actually makes sense (sort of).Watskeburt means what's up, while vaske bur can be translated to cleaning cages.[NSFW] <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YiVhFgN7I_M" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YiVhFgN7I_M</a>

GeorgeKangas超过 7 年前

For me, most singing "Sounds Like English But Is Nonsense". So if I had watched this Italian guy's video, without being told it was nonsense... I wouldn't have made out a single word, but I wouldn't have known there actually wasn't a single word to make out.Some singing is enunciated enough, that I actually do hear all the words. Notably, the Beatles.

chatmasta超过 7 年前

A cool data science project would be analyzing the dictionaries of all languages (at least those sharing an alphabet) and finding networks of cognates or shared words, i.e. building a connected graph where all vertices are words and edges represent a cognate between a word in two languages.I think the relevant keywords here would be "computational historical linguistics."

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dkersten超过 7 年前

This made me think about how text generated from a hidden markov model can look like real sentences but is usually just gibberish.

ilamont超过 7 年前

Going the other way, Bill Hader's "Vinny Vedecci" character, which is a mixture of real and made-up Italian:<a href="http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/vinny-talks-to-john-malkovich/n12386?snl=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/vinny-talks-to-...</a>

have_faith超过 7 年前

Without reading the comments, guess the original song here: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOjxmR6mXBY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOjxmR6mXBY</a>edit: for context, the whole album is a mashup of 'perceived' Asian motifs mashed together to create a recognisable but fake aesthetic.

tomdre超过 7 年前

I find even more hilarious the opposite phenomenon: English songs with fake Italian. My favorite example "zooma zooma baccala'" <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Msbx4onTzFU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Msbx4onTzFU</a>

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favadi超过 7 年前

There is a Thailand song that became famous in Vietnam because the lyric somehow sounds 90% like Vietnamese and with very funny meaning: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0n4T0SQt70" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0n4T0SQt70</a>.

adrianmonk超过 7 年前

If you want to hear the opposite (English speakers making up Italian sounding nonsense), there's always the song "Sun King" by The Beatles.It actually might be non-specific Romance languages that it's a fake version of, but it sounds like fake Italian to me.

nearmuse超过 7 年前

Is this reddit now?

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besselheim超过 7 年前

To give another example, Amon Tobin's Verbal achieves a similar effect through piecing together fragments of vocal samples: <a href="https://youtu.be/HsdBgQqBfsM" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/HsdBgQqBfsM</a>

ggm超过 7 年前

I have my family copy of <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mots_d%27Heures" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mots_d%27Heures</a>

NiklasMort超过 7 年前

Aren't they saying in the beginning "I am freezing cold and my shoes'r off"? I hear lot of phrases and words, must be my brain tricking me.

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punnerud超过 7 年前

Sounds a lot like evolutionary algorithm? With the addition that you feed the new and improved «paths» from the exploration from back to the nevral network.

edgarvm超过 7 年前

Reminds me when I find out that should I stay or should I go is partially in spanish, I didn't know it until read the lyrics

amag超过 7 年前

It reminds of when I as a Swede hear a Dutch person speak. My brain tells me that I should understand but I don't.

boomlinde超过 7 年前

Plenty of old italo disco songs have absolutely nonsense word salad english lyrics

D_Guidi超过 7 年前

Adriano Celentano, truly an Italian legendary artist. Actor, singer, performer.

sumedh超过 7 年前

Better quality video from the original artist<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5VpczwrSCc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5VpczwrSCc</a>

emmelaich超过 7 年前

(off topic ..)Can someone help me find this?There is a black and white music video of an Italian girl singing an American folk/pop song -- I think it is "If I had a hammer". Maybe from the 1960s or 50s.It's bit faster than the usual version plus the girl looks pretty threatening - like she's carrying a knife and not afraid to use it.

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