An Italian Song That Sounds Like English But Is Nonsense | Hacker News Reader

An Italian Song That Sounds Like English But Is Nonsense

atlasobscura.com

373 pointsidiocratic209 comments

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]https://youtu.be/yqVVv97pKGk

[2]https://youtu.be/xbcp8wZZyII

Considering the rich tradition of Bulgarian vocal music, this is hilarious. I've been fan of Bulgarian choral music since I heard the state choir 25 years ago.

In contrast, listen to this version of your famous song Devoyko Mari by an American group called Kitka https://youtu.be/M1eSMDmYzDQ

Wow amazing! A point of pride for bulgarians is that one of our folk songs ended up on the gold record onboard Voyager 1 [1]. I knew about japanese groups singing bulgarian folk songs but this amarican one is new to me, thanks for the link.

A fun inter-cultural song is from the italian band Elio el e Storie Tese that recorded one with the choir of bulgarian national radio - “Pippero” [2]. Its sad that there aren’t many modern collaborations like that as it sounds very magical and beautiful to me.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valya_Balkanska

[2]https://youtu.be/l3hlxHhuyaE

Speaking of Delyo Haydutin, and I'm not Bulgarian, but I can't get enough of the Bulgarian Idol version by Nevena Tzoneva. [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuaE8i-aFJU

The Bulgarian state choir isn't a representative of a rich tradition. Most of that music came about in the Communist era when the authorities wanted music that fit the Western norms demanded by socialist realism, but was lightly spiced with aspects of Bulgarian folk music so that it could seem "close to the people". There is a huge difference between that state-created choral genre and real Bulgarian traditional music as heard on archival recordings by ethnographers. Ethnomusicologist Timothy Rice's publications explain some of these differences.

I think I saw this in Australia. That the "tulibudibudouchu" lady?

Oof. The first few minutes of the first video is kinda hard to watch. They seem to make a big deal about where she is from. There is an obvious reaction when she says she's married to a Turk. The guy on the right threatens to leave.

This all before she starts singing.

I know the video is from 2008, but is everything OK over there in Bulgaria?

That's a leftover thing back from Ottoman Empire times. There is not a lot of love for Turkish people in Bulgaria.

So the situation isn't great but it's been not great for a long time.

It’s not well-known in Western Europe, but a lot of what look like racist undertones in the Balkan/Eastern European area, are deep-seated cultural artefacts from centuries of continuous and bloody war with Ottoman invaders.

Those are racist undertones, even when put in context.

But it's important to put them in context because it makes them more understandable.

I have to agree. This sort of hatred kind of made sense 150 years ago when it was part of a liberation struggle, but it's just plain racism at the moment. People should be better than this.

(Disclaimer: I'm a Bulgarian who's lived in the UK for the past decade. Most Bulgarians who have lived in Bulgaria their whole lives would probably disagree with me.)

The fact that it was a part of liberation struggle didn't make it not racism.

Actually it did. Jews in Germany in 36 hating on the German people for what they're doing to them is not "racism".

Yeah, I had most of my family killed in Holocaust and I still think that if a Jewish person would be hating on a random German person (like what happened to German colony in Haifa right about this time) is still racism.

We're so hardly conditioned to believe that "racism is wrong" that when we see instances of racism that actually make sense, we instinctively want to name it something else.

>We're so hardly conditioned to believe that "racism is wrong" that when we see instances of racism that actually make sense, we instinctively want to name it something else.

Part of it is that.

Another part is that we conflate any collective tension or precaution or generalization to "hating".

You might not hate blacks, but you still wont want to walk alone in 3AM in downtown L.A. Even if 99% of the people you meet there are great with you, it only takes 1-2 persons to attack or rob you to make the precaution (and thus the generalization) perfectly rational. That doesn't make you a racist, just a person aware of crime statistics.

Few, if anyone, can just say, "I'll just visit downtown L.A. at 3 AM without a care in my mind, and judge people I meet there on an individual basis". And even the few that do that, if they end having it bad, they rarely keep to the same ideal.

When you live in a country with actual history (as opposed to rural Iowa where nothing ever threatened it), it's not racism.

You don't start because you believe the neighbors are somehow inferior, you start because you know that you have dangerous differences, or that they occupy some parts of you country that should be freed, or because they are in the offensive every now and then and so on.

Words have a meaning. Not all situations where a group is cautious or even hates another are racism. The same way blacks in the US being cautious of whites is not racism -- they do have a long history of suffering in their hands that justifies that as the prudent behavior.

That's the critical point about racism that no one seems to mention though. Every racist person is racist ultimately because of fear. Regardless of how justified their fear is, they hate because they are consumed by fear and mistrust of the other, which is a natural human reaction. We may not empathize with their fear but to them it is very real.

When you understand racism in this context it becomes clear that the narrative of people being racist because they are hateful is far too shallow. It goes much deeper than that.

You make it sound as if it can be nothing but emotional, whereas there actually can be an objective, reasoned aspect as well.

No one is objective and we are very often ruled by emotion.

Which is neither here, nor there.

We might be "very often ruled by emotion" but there's also an objective reality out there. A black guy flirting with a white woman in the 20's Alabama would indeed find themselves hanging from a tree -- whether they were "objective" or not.

And that would happen because of herd mentality outrage fueled by anger that ultimately derives from fear.

If that was true, it could happen towards any group and at all times, but it usually happens to specific groups in specific scenarios.

The anger and outrage helped keep blacks down, and thus their wages down, and keeping them for asking for more and competing with whites. Just like before the civil war it helped justify their being kept as slaves, and thus function as profit centers.

So it's not just irrational fear.

It's often the case that majority groups feel threatened by minority groups, or that the majority is jealous of a relatively more successful minority. Or that a minority group feels resentment for bad treatment.

These are all conditions that cause racial tension to flare. It's actually quite predictable, which reminds us that the spread of racism is like a social disease and should be treated as such.

coldtea was pointing out an example where racism is not irrational, but very rational indeed. It is statistically valid for black people in the US to be afraid of white people in certain situations.

So you're saying the contestant's husband poses an actual legitimate threat to the judge? Or is it just a stereotype he's reacting to?

He's taking a stance for many, and treats the other as if he equally represents many.

He is not ready to "forgive and forget" and put "water under the bridge" for what he thinks those many did (or continue to do) to his country.

That's not a response to a "legitimate threat", but it's the expression of a legitimate (as far as that person is concerned) grievance.

> So you're saying

You're aware of the meme going around regarding this phrase I assume? :)

No, I'm saying there can be an objective, reasoned aspect as to racism, that is doesn't have to be purely based on "fear".

And so the question becomes: who drives those fears, and what makes the fearful ones resistant to new information?

>That's the critical point about racism that no one seems to mention though. Every racist person is racist ultimately because of fear.

The thing is, fear can be totally rational and even justified and not your fault. In which case, it's not racism.

E.g. a black in the 30's south fearing of whites (for lynching, beating up, etc) is justified.

But a white feeling superior, and believing those blacks are animals, to be kept in their place, etc, that was actual racism.

[Added] If fact actual racism, from the first land grabs in Americas, to the development of official theories of "race" back in the 18th and 19th centuries (Gobineau, Galton and so on IIRC), is strongly tied to power grab -- painting the other as inferior to morally justify taking other their land and enslaving them. Racism was used as a tool to justify European colonialism, US slavery, Japanese conquests, etc.

Racism without having the upper hand, is hardly racism.

You don't have to have the upper hand to be racist, and you don't have to be voluntarily racist, and you don't have to be at fault to be racist. Blacks in the 1930s making generalizations about whites is still racism, regardless of how justified or disadvantaged they may be.

I know this means that there's an uncomfortable category, a shade of gray that is "justified racism" and there are situations where not being racist might mean you're putting yourself at risk by trusting someone (e.g. your historical violent white man example) that due to historical circumstances has the "upper hand" and might use it to cause you harm, and these aren't very comfortable or popular ideas, but ... too bad?

When you can wrestle with the idea that racism can possibly be justified or a useful heuristic, you can possibly relate to the people who are racist, understand their fears and mistrust, and possibly bridge a gap to where you can explain to them that they don't have much to fear from the other.

But the rational fear they once had is no longer justified. The judge on that TV show has no reason to be weary of the contestant's husband at all, it's completely irrational. And anyone that looks at that situation and says, "actually, history shows he's justified in his xenophobia" is making the same irrational mistake.

>But the rational fear they once had is no longer justified.

That's not how it works in those places though. The neighbor countries can (and historically have) turn around and attack the other neighbors again and again, and there are tension and provocations and such even after periods of relative peace.

And you can't tell someone who lost their loved ones due to this or that incident involving some people, that it's now all "water under the bridge". Healing from such things takes many decades, and even generations to actually heal.

If X murdered your father, you didn't want any relation with them, even decades later, even if there wasn't anything else to fear from them. And you probably wouldn't be best buddies with their relatives in general either. Now, imagine that in a more widespread way, where whole countries were under attack, with perhaps hundreds of thousands or millions dying, and you having multiple people you mourn from that time.

I don't for a minute buy the "racism is fear" line, seems like greed, ignorance, innate tribalism (at least) are all equally strong motivators.

I tend to agree that history is important to consider in such situations, but only if you apply this concept equally instead of picking and choosing when and on whom to apply it. Otherwise, it's nothing more than hypocrisy.

A thought experiment: would you react the same way if the original example was of an Egyptian singer being interviewed on an Egyptian channel and revealing that he/she was married to an Israeli?

On the contrary, I think we should apply it selectively, and chose when and on whom to apply it.

For history is important to consider but not all historical situations are alike.

We could justify a reaction from whatever side, if they had equally suffered from the other side.

History is painful, and we might say "but she's just married to an X citizen, what's the harm", but the other's that got offended might have visions of their family or friends or themselves being killed, or treated badly because of being non X. It might not have been that particular X citizen that did those offenses, but they didn't see other X citizens rushing to their rescue either -- on the contrary, they might have seen a lot of them cheering for it. (And I'm sure the same would hold if an Israeli woman was revealing in a Israeli channel that she was married to an Egyptian -- and it could still be justified and understood under their experiences).

Oh yeah? Man, Russia has been subject to racism so much, they might win billions in a court case...

Indeed, they are. The same should be said against those who look down upon Caucasian Europeans because people from Europe bought slaves from Arab traders and took them to the Americas, about British ex-prisoners who took land from the Aboriginals, about Europeans who took land from native American tribes, about... well, you get the gist. What happened in historical times is just that, history. The inhabitants of modern Turkey carry no guilt for the atrocities of the Ottoman empire, just like modern-day Japanese (except for surviving war criminals) are not to blame for the misdeeds of the Japanese empire, nor are current Europeans the same as those who traded in slaves or established colonies in Africa. It is good to have this sorted out so people can get on building functional societies based on the here and now, not on old feuds and historical misdeeds.

Funny thing is "Bulgars" were Turkic people.

More like slavic, but sure, let's go with that - the native British are more like German people.

Original Bulgar tribes were Turkic not slavic, migrated from Asia, through north of black sea. I did not say all current Bulgarian population is descendants of them.

I see no obvious reaction, and the guy on the right threatens to leave for another reason than her being married to a turk.

All is, and was, good in Bulgaria.

As for someone who has the nerve to sing a standard in English without having a clue of the language, and on national TV, this cringefest is hard to beat: El Príncipe Gitano trying his hand at Elvis https://youtu.be/QrTfYItDDwA

And now you know what it sounds like to Italians when Americans sing opera.

She actually had another crack at it where it looked as though she studied the lyrics harder as she does quite a good job

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEbV5M59Xc8

In the 50s, when Nat King Cole was a world-wide sensation, he recorded a couple albums in Spanish. He learned how to sing Spanish phonetically. He lived and recorded in Southern California, so his record producers made sure he didn't sound too bad.

https://www.allmusic.com/album/cole-espa%C3%B1ol-mw000122605...

Um, that's not a Mariah Carey song. I mean, she may have done a cover of it, but the original is from the 1970s [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-ZDKirjQgM

There's actually a similar rock song from Finland recorded in 1974: https://youtu.be/yGCviZAdxeY

In this case, the lyrics are actual English words, but the verses they form are just total gibberish: https://genius.com/Hurriganes-get-on-lyrics

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.

"Well, old Alabama, just a sweet Carolina Just a-rockin' and rollin' may leave town Got to be a scoogie, lay on my boogie Let me hear you say you got my hole around"

LOL

This reminds me of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Especially if you replaced Alabama and Carolina with California.

Haha nice Markov Chain going there

To be fair, this appears to make about as much sense as your average rock song. :P Even something as venerable as Stairway To Heaven has lyrics that are, at best, allegorical poetry, or, at worst, sweet-sounding gibberish.

Nothing beats the Spanish dictator Franco speaking English

https://youtu.be/EBS_n2lgYUI

Maybe 'el principe gitano' does, he is a Spanish folk music singer. He liked Elvis Presley's 'In the ghetto' very much but didn't know a word of English. He sang it anyway... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGSgAfJQsic

>He liked Elvis Presley's 'In the ghetto' very much but didn't know a word of English. He sang it anyway...

Also see: many, many Korean and Japanese pop songs....

Not even François Hollance (ex-french president)?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPb4MHIvbP0

Here's a great one from Estonia, featured in this very weird Soviet-era movie https://youtu.be/jpW9Fcrw5kE

Maybe they're total gibberish, but just for the sake of comparison, I knew a woman who sang in a band that performed "Come Together" (from the Beatles). I remember her saying, "Don't distract me when I'm singing this, because the words make no sense, and I can't remember them if I don't concentrate."

Yeah The Beatles were one of those bands where their songs are so personal that many of their lyrics only make sense to them and may as well be total nonsense to everyone else. I fully believe they're as popular as they are partly because everyone who listens is trying to find their decoded meaning.

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/11/i-... also off topic: on William F. Buckley and his understanding of the spanish language: for context start at minute 14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNxzQSheCkc

I don't know, these lyrics make about as much sense to me as most songs written by English speakers.

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!"

cf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mots_d%27Heures

Do the words have the same meaning?

Of course they do not.

I am Polish, and my brain is actively resisting reading it in Polish. Had a good laugh. Thanks!

Potrzebie was a long-running gag word in MAD magazine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potrzebie

And Don Knuth's first publication [1].

[1] The Potrzebie system of weights and measures. MAD Magazine 1(33), pp. 36–37, June, 1957.

I’m curious: what is the English translation of the Polish reading of it?

In the spirit of Cunningham's Law, here's the Google translation: "This dog ... and these forts ... and fly much? That's Buddha's handle! Permanent dog, shoe and eyebrow, constantly ... But, well - we are old elevators, carts of wines ... One - is the same constantly dog! Bath? Piece? And top this letter, smoke it! I won!"

Nice, Google. Small changes:

"This dog ... and these forts ... and fly of flies? That's Buddha's handles! Constantly dog, shoe and eyebrow, constantly ... But, well - we are old elevators, carts of wines ... They - is the same constantly dog! Bath? Stoves? And sink this letter, smoke it! And get out!"

I have the very same problem with this video, but in Spanish. Once I hear the spanish interpretation I can no longer hear it in English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNXpL9pQ_pA

In Japanese, the word for this is 'soramimi', which is basically misheard lyrics, and there's a show that turns it into hilarious skits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lgOZlQJ_sw

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] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikZgUHJys2s [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paninaro [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Italy [3] https://youtu.be/ikZgUHJys2s?t=86

A lot of people everywhere have a fascination with the US, I wouldn't attribute that to CIA money. Raggare in Sweden comes to mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raggare

I think that the History section of the article you posted proves my point.

> Formation of the raggare culture was aided by Sweden staying neutral during World War II and untouched by the war, due to which, Sweden's infrastructure remained intact, the country was receiving aid from the Marshall Plan, and export economy boomed, which made it possible for the working-class Swedish youth to buy cars, in contrast to most of the rest of the Europe, which needed to be rebuilt.

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. :)

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).

Ehh that's true, but it's not the definition of Italo Disco. Most Italo can be understood just fine.

Italo disco is currently having a small revival in some techno acts like Bicep.

Strongly agree. A personal favorite:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zDV_dBYp4h0

“Oh! What you’re gonna be!?”

Thanks for sharing! Have you got more of these? I'd appreciate recommendation of artists/songs to check out.

The first advice I always give people that are trying to get into Italo is to check out Flemming Dalum's mixes: https://soundcloud.com/flemming/sets/flemming-dalum-mixes

I'm discovering this. That's excellent ! Do you have other suggestions ?

Classic!

Some of my personal favourite, unintelligible Italo tracks:

Sensitive - Driving: https://youtu.be/Qprd11nRO7c

Alex Valentini - Beautiful Life: https://youtu.be/-CbtAaPPLAg

Fockewulf 190 - Gitano: https://youtu.be/kto_Yi0Bec4

Completely unrelated: the Focke-Wulf 190 was one of the most beautiful aircraft of all time.

Love this track! Thanks for sharing it.

True for me, steady rhythm of Italo disco keeps me focused

Got me through the last crunch of my dissertation. One weekend with italo disco and liters of Earl Grey tea.

Unintelligible lyrics aren't a necessary part of Italo, though; it's just that they were sometimes written by people who didn't speak English terribly well, and cared more about making something people could dance to.

Nonetheless, i have upvoted your comment, as Italo is the third best genre of music, and deserves to be more widely appreciated.

Out of interest: if Italo is"the third best genre", what are the top two?

1. Acid house

2. Dub

Sorry, so just to clarify, your top three genres of music are... acid house, dubstep and uh... Italo?!

Dub and dubstep are different genres. They're the same concept applied to to different genres of music. It technically makes dubstep a subgenre of Dub, but the music they're based off is different enough that they don't usually sound alike.

4. Surf rock

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

HN is rock, everything else is slow

I was going to comment a similar statement.. But I was wandering nobody else is concerned about it?

I don't think this should be on HN. But may be I don't understand the purpose.

First, of all, the parent means his comment as a positive thing. Not as a concern.

That said, HN is for posting things that strike our intellectual curiosity, and this has tons of interest regarding language, linguistics, culture, writing, etc.

HN is not just about computers and startups, and it says explicitly so in its guidelines.

> the parent means his comment as a positive thing.

I don't see a sign if that!

> HN is for posting things that strike our intellectual curiosity

Even cat's videos strike intellectual curiosity to some that doesn't mean it should be on HN.

Internet personality Saara turned speaking fake languages into a career with this amazing little clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybcvlxivscw

And her pitch-perfect imitation of 14 different musical genres is equally amazing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybcvlxivscw

That Portuguese looks like russian and Spanish is Italian.

IMO Portuguese (in Portugal, not Brazil) actually sounds a lot like Russian or Polish at first listen, the accent is very different than other western European romance languages

Heads up, both your links are the same, but your second link should be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQLkJJpAIcU.

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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybcvlxivscw

Another classic from around the same time is Gigi Proietti's sketch[1] where he pretends to speak American English. It's hilarious.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO4EkyRNWww

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMAeNv-Lpj4

And to go one level deeper, there's the famous Biz Markie cover of "Bennie and the Jets."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_l_runP4-Q

The comedy panel show Shooting Stars had a round where the presenter Vic Reeves would sing pop songs "in the club style", and contestants had to recognize them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2prE-DUyESY

There's never been anyone quite like Reeves and Mortimer.

Wow, thank you! Clicking that link and following a few clicks on YouTube made me find a song I've been searching for around 20 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8dqCQ2MHfQ via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q538wfyJurM

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...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FcI8z-HoKPY

Locked at 666 views?

Nope, 700+ now

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.

As someone who prides himself at figuring out song lyrics, I feel more and more unnerved when I listen to it, it’s like I’m straining to understand and eventually start to get anxious when I listen!

Once I stop caring and just listen, I like it a lot though.

In the same vein there is the famous cover of Mariah Carey's "Without You" by Valentin Hasan, known as "Ken Lee":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQt-h753jHI

You also have the famous Haddaway-cover “Don Herby”:

https://youtu.be/VNmbpivtRoQ

I think the guy's doing that one on purpose to be honest. He's cashing in on the popularity of his (unintentionally) hilarious rendition of Big in Japan (or "bikicsunáj"): https://youtu.be/E2GFjXmXEsw

In the ghetto by "El prícipe gitano" https://youtu.be/QrTfYItDDwA

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] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorpions_(band)

Agnetha and Anni-Frid from ABBA didn't know English when their first hit songs were out. They learned the songs phonetically and then learned the language later.

Funnily enough, my dad grew up in the USSR and said he learned a lot of English listening to Scorpions records and reading the lyrics + translations. They were some of the few records he could get his hands on. He said it was a huge help when we all immigrated to the US later.

Heh. Blind leading the blind if true. That's funny...now I hope the rumors were real.

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

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 :)

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

Soderbergh's Schizopolis has a lot of scenes with fake or, better yet, subtext language. One of my favorites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eOLEdTG7Gc

For anyone who doesn't want to read here is the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8

it's also included in the article.

Don't miss the modern cover (with a cameo from the original author/performer). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn_OLnMriRg

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:

https://youtu.be/xutpxia3Qkc

For something even less serious, check out how to speak any language in three steps: https://youtu.be/s5qlu4vnCXE

Original link for the second video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx4ABAKyo-A

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

I knew exactly what the song was the moment I read the title. It's nice that there's a ton of additional context in this article that we didn't get when it popped up on reddit 8 years ago.

Although I wonder if we'll get longform articles about eating Tide Pods in 2026.

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... :)

https://youtu.be/YR5ApYxkU-U?list=RDYR5ApYxkU-U&t=237

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.

I think something vaguely similar is happening in the Benny lava song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdyC1BrQd6g).

Though the song is coherent in Tamil, the bad audio makes the whole thing hilarious for someone who can't understand the language.

The so called "buffalax effect" (from the username of the guy who made the first such video). There are a few such videos, in different Indian languages.

I'm a Tamil guy, and interestingly enough I can see the effect when it's a Hindi song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLpROhIg9eA, possibly nsfw wording), and understand how they hear it as those English words. But when it's a Tamil song like the one you linked, I can't hear the English words at all, however much I try to shut down the Tamil-hearing part of my brain.

Wow, I'm a Hindi speaker and the effect completely fails for me on the first track. However, Buffalax' Rajinikanth does sound completely true. I'm amazed how the two of us are completely perceiving opposite things in the same songs.

An early-00s example of this was a flash video called "Irrational Exuberance" where a guy animated an interpretation of the lyrics to a Japanese song called "Yatta" by Happatai: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ljsPqIfPD0

I remember watching this in my teens and completely losing it at "Who dong hide", and "You look up to eating one calorie!?"

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: https://youtu.be/0reKaJTs4k8?t=30

Icelandic Sigur Rós do songs with vocals that sound emotive but don't actually mean anything:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAYb8ZyjzD0

Verified by an Icelandic friend.

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: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWYHfjMIY8w

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...

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:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G96luhHhxnI

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!

I remember watching the video which you are talking about, a quick search did not return any results, I guess it has disappeared for some reason.

I am sure there might be a torrent somewhere.

Low-fi and with some added lens flare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g6YxkSqL20

I guess this was used as an intro for a tv show.

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.

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] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YiVhFgN7I_M

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.

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."

Maybe analyse all the Eurovision lyrics and write a suitable entry for your country. Could you do same for the music?

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

Going the other way, Bill Hader's "Vinny Vedecci" character, which is a mixture of real and made-up Italian:

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/vinny-talks-to-...

Without reading the comments, guess the original song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOjxmR6mXBY

edit: for context, the whole album is a mashup of 'perceived' Asian motifs mashed together to create a recognisable but fake aesthetic.

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

I'm confused. Isn't that Neapolitan or Sicilian or some other dialect/language?

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

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.

Is this reddit now?

Up next: 10 little known tricks you wouldn't believe help your EC2 Instance network bandwith be #woke AF!!

That has been true for a few years, sadly.

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

I have my family copy of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mots_d%27Heures

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.

Interesting you should "mishear" that part; that entire phrase is actually the name of the song: "Prisencolinensinainciusol."

I wonder what text to speech would "hear" there. Should be similar interpretation as mine.

I like to study languages and this happens to me embarrassingly often. I call it hyperhearing. Overhearing a fragment of speech, I'll mentally force it to be some language I'm studying, only to find out upon hearing more that it's definitely a language I don't know a word of.

My girlfriend likes to listen to French music, and I don't speak French, so I'll sometimes sing along with the words that sound almost like English. She naturally can't do it because all she can hear is the actual French meanings, not the craziness I come up with.

I've also heard that one of the biggest 'tells' of (American?) English is how the 'r' is pronounced with the tongue unnaturally forced into the back of the throat, so when movies try to create invented languages, they tend to avoid that sound, and it makes it sound more foreign or alien. It's also one of the harder sounds for children to learn.

In italy there is "Canzoni Travisate" (Misheard songs) where somebody subtitles parts of english language songs that could sound like an italian. It's hilarious (to italians..) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtFhej8TvAI

I was expecting "l'8 di gennaio"...

I think that's called a 'rohtic' pronunciation (never studied linguistic) and carried over into the American dialect from an older English dialect.

see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhoticity_in_English

Some take it to the next level: https://youtu.be/yqVVv97pKGk

Here you go then, French with fake subtitles in English:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_a256A5RFQ

This is an unknown Indian language:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3wTY00564Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz9pXe4PbRQ

Dutch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucB84k0G3EU

Korean, at least mostly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5ZfW1XzAgA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvASlcUuCZI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN_E6HCuE5A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHf1bKw_ftI

Possibly Chinese:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK2gdO31pYs

Japanese:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwrqzGBNvGY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt6RuccJdAo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcdYbEangV4

Seems like a Germanic or Slavic language:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRIn_60Ei6I

Dutch pronounces <r> in the same way in some contexts (before another consonant or at the end of words) and the first time you hear it you might have a moment of confusion, thinking people are speaking English but you just can't understand it for some reason.

The official term is mondegreen

There's a classic Peter Kay clip on youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ukn2YT5jeM - which exploits how succeptible we are to suggestion when it comes to mondegreens.

Warning: Kay has a strong Northern English accent and heavily uses local idioms so I hope the humor isn't lost on an international audience.

Definitively not lost, thanks for the hilarity!

Actually Peter Kays accent is not that strong like wise Jasper Carrots Birmingham accent is not the full Yam Yam "black country" dialect. BTW black country refers to the mines in the rural areas near Birmingham and not to race.

And I wont mention the accents in peaky blinders :-)

That happens to me when I hear people talking in Dutch for some reason my brain tells me they are speaking a weird version English.

It's called a Mondegreen [1] in English, where a foreign language (or nonsense language in this case) is interpreted by your brain to be some meaningful sentence in your (usually) native language.

In Dutch the phenomenon is known nowadays as a "Mamma Appelsapje" (a "Mommy Apple Juice"), because the Michael Jackson song "Wanna be starting something" contains

> mama say mama sa mama coosa

Which sounds to Dutch speakers like

> mama say mama sa mamma appelsap

Another one is Chumbawamba - Tubthumping, where

> You're never gonna keep me down

Sounds like

> Jullie hebben nog niet betaald

Which means "You haven't paid yet"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen

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.

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

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.

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

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

Better quality video from the original artist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5VpczwrSCc

(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.

That's her, (name) Rita, (surname) Pavone. (Song name) Datemi un martello (Give me a hammer). She's holding an actual hammer. https://youtu.be/lGIXrziSLCQ

She's been quite popular, perhaps as much as Adriano Celentano (the one mentioned in this article link) who's been and still is very popular in Italy both as an artist and as a (political) thinker.

It's a pity that Celentano is nowhere near to his 60s hits, for either style or innovation... it's more run of the mill adult pop.

Man, Celentano is literally 80. Do you really want to see him dance?

No, retire. :-)

For those interested in listening to Italian music I’d add Mina to the list, of course, Ornella Vanoni, Mia Martini (whom I’ve discovered only recently, this song where she sings along with Vanoni is pure musical joy: https://youtu.be/TjMUPdnNjsw) and last but especially not least Luigi Tenco (if you google his name you’ll find quite an interesting life-story, and his lyrics for “Ciao amore” resonate to an almost middle-aged guy like me even today, 50+ years after they’ve been written, as for the first time in my life I’m seriously thinking about immigrating). There was a time (from the ‘60s up to the early ‘90s) when Italian music was ruling over much of Europe (just go to an Adriano Celentano YT video and you can see fan comments written in Russian, German, Spanish etc), it was glorious.

I wouldn’t say it “ruled”, but there was a presence. It went both ways: Italian music would routinely adapt and translate songs from other countries, something pretty rare these days.

Some Italian acts are still massively popular outside the country: Laura Pausini, Eros Ramazzotti... but the industry currently focuses more on the Spanish and SouthAmerican markets.

Over here in Eastern Europe it kind of did rule, along with French music. I mean, as a kid of the ‘80s I knew lots and lots of Italian and French singers (and actors), while I had only heard about Michael Jackson, Madonna, Elvis and The Beatles from the Anglo-Saxon countries. France and Italy had many steps ahead in terms of “soft power” and “mass culture dominance” in the ‘70s and the ‘80s, but they somehow have failed to capitalize on it and we are all now under US cultural dominance, with some British undertones (not that there’s anything wrong with that, just stating the facts). There are some “return of these repressed” French and Italian cultural presences here and there in nowadays mainstream mass culture (with Tarantino and his love for Italian movies of that era being the best example) but otherwise we’re living in a mono-cultural world, of which this article is a prime example (they had to explain to its readers who Celentano is, for instance).

The “failure to capitalize” in Italy was due to huge economic pressure on public finances in the late ‘80s, that wiped any surplus (which cultural industries need, in order to thrive) and fostered a mindset where “culture doesn’t pay”. Liberalisation of the tv sector also opened the doors to a flood of cheap imports from US, UK and Japan.

And some times go the other way the standard "I who have nothing" is the English version of "Uno Dei Tanti"

maybe this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6PpPqbR4YU ?

Yes, same as the other two but this is the best quality.

It's Rita Pavone and she's holding a hammer while singing :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGIXrziSLCQ the video says 1964

Thank you!

Random hint if you like this stuff: https://youtu.be/OEVYhqnHF1E

Yikes. Twisters were scary folk.

Btw, the Italian title says "give me a hammer".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Had_a_Hammer

There's a french version (big hit back in the days) by Claude François: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7nrcb3oGkc

When I read the OP, since it was talking about the fascination of Italians with American culture at the time, I was surprised it didn't include a bit about the barrage of Italian covers of English/American songs from the time.

For example, besides the song you were looking for, Celentano himself did a cover for Stand by Me (Pregherò), which is a really weird Christian-themed take on the original.

For the record, Rita Pavone had a massive success with that song. The translation removed all the original socialist themes, and ended up being a perfect fit for her image: a grumpy, androgynous teenager ready to explode. She was a prototype of rebellious female adolescent, with short hair and an angry mouth, which was fairly scandalous on Italian media at the time. She often played opposite to Gianni Morandi, who was at the other end of the spectrum - the spotless good-hearted kid that every mother would want.

My Italian parents were slightly incredulous when I found out about the actual origins of “If I had a hammer”. For them it was just a fun and unthreatening mainstream hit they used to dance to, and had never heard the original.

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