It's Gibberish, But Italian Pop Song Still Means Something | Hacker News Reader

It's Gibberish, But Italian Pop Song Still Means Something

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89 pointsdanso84 comments

I'm amazed at how well he has the sounds down. I'd never peg him as Italian, and I probably wouldn't realize it was gibberish until the backup singers did it slowly; I'd think I was just failing to get it, like listening to Dylan on a bad day.

I'm amazed at the contrast with British actors trying to do American accents, which never fool me; is it easier to do it with gibberish, or is he just unusually good at mimicking American sounds?

He is one of the greatest italian artists who ever lived, and in his early years he was also an avid listener to american rock'n'roll classics. The video is from at least 30 years ago. Maybe 40.

39 :-) (As per Youtube's video title - "Adriano Celentano - PRISENCOLINENSINAINCIUSOL (1974)"

FTA:

>released 40 years ago this weekend.

He definitely is incredibly good. Did you ever try to fluently speak gibberish? It's pretty hard to come up with something without repeating yourself, not to mention something resembling an existing language.

As a young man, Richard Feynman was fascinated by the sounds of Italian, and faked Italian sounding gibberish, even to the point of "performing" it in front of his sister's Girl Scout troop.

http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-surely-youre-joking-mr-fe...

Even McNulty on The Wire? When I saw him later on some talk show and he was speaking and holding himself as a posh Brit (ie himself) it almost broke my brain. So, yeah, he fooled me.

McNulty really wasn't very good at covering up his accent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg_3ZSeHL4g

> which never fool me

Really never, or do you just never notice?

There was a great YouTube video here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-cAnFbEXY0) - but it seems to have been removed by the user. Not sure if there's any way to find it now. It was Americans speaking gibberish, and it sounded pretty convincingly like language.

When I've been aware of it, it's never been convincing — but of course you're right; if I'm unaware of it and it did fool me, I wouldn't know. Let's amend the above to "which usually don't fool me."

A similar effect happens with CGI. Most (tech savvy) people think that they can smell CGI from a mile away, but the vast majority of CGI these days is subtle and mundane (put another helicopter in the background there; we didn't have budget to rent two), and slips right by unnoticed. It's when the CGI is something obviously impossible and also the focus of a scene that viewers actually notice.

> Most (tech savvy) people think that they can smell CGI from a mile away

This is dependent on how much physics is going on in the scene, and how good the person's intuitive sense of physics is. I think a lot of that's been damaged by seeing bad CGI in films. One disturbing thing I've noticed is that before widespread CGI, animator's sense of physics seemed to be getting better as animation technique developed. Now, it seems to be getting worse.

This hoax was supposed to be "good" CG: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B61_4NCebWc

But besides the various problems, the physics of the bird is just flat-out wrong. When birds of prey snatch something off the ground, they are relying on having enough momentum, such that after the snatch, they still have forward motion to maintain airspeed. The portrayed bird in the video doesn't have any forward motion just after the snatch. No forward motion means no lift. There's nothing holding it up. The flapping wings are horizontally oriented and flapping vertically, so they're primarily thrusting forwards. (Birds with little to no forward motion can flap their wings to thrust away from the ground, but then their wings are oriented vertically, and the flapping is horizontal.) I can only assume the animators think "levitation rays" come off the bottom of the wings.

That's egregious, but it's what passes for "good" CG nowadays. Then you have the totally execrable stuff in Hollywood blockbusters. (Star Wars ep. 1-3)

Grossly exaggerated physics in movies are nothing new though. Before CGI, explosions were still silly puffy balls of fire, and people still survived them by jumping away from them in slow motion.

And before CGI, hoaxes were still terrible, yet people bought into them. I mean, look at the Cottingley Fairies from the early 20th century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies. The bar for fooling laymen just isn't that high, and never has been.

As for Hollywood blockbusters, it really varies a lot from movie to movie. Also, the Star Wars prequels are nearly 8-14 years old, so they're not the greatest examples of modern CGI.

"Really never, or do you just never notice?"

Indeed. Folks seem unbelievably harsh on accents they know not to be the native one, which is every time a famous actor does an accent, but all those no-names doing even not very good ones fly straight under their radar, making me highly skeptical it's not just confirmation bias.

Christian Bale often keeps his American accents for interviews and press. There might be something in that...

> Folks seem unbelievably harsh on accents they know not to be the native one, which is every time a famous actor does an accent

Either Hugh Laurie isn't famous, or you don't have any idea he's British. ;)

Every time he plays House, he's doing a fake American accent. He just does it really, amazingly well.

Here's Hugh Laurie as the Prince of Wales (the total idiot) in a short segment from the series "Blackadder the Third":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOSYiT2iG08

Great example, and I believe complementary to my observation. If talk show interviews are to be believed then when Hugh Laurie began on House he wasn't famous in America, and most people didn't have any idea he was British. The show was a hit, everyone loved him, and then it's far too late for anyone to erroneously pick apart his flawless accent.

It's almost impossible to imagine, but if Hugh Laurie had been popular in America, and his natural voice widely known, then the reception to that series could have been very different, purely from unfounded criticism of the accent. And if this is starting to sound a little far-fetched, let's not forget it all began with someone saying "British actors trying to do American accents, which never fool me".

Well... I knew he was British, as did some of the people I know that watched the show, and it really didn't have any impact on how we watched it (at least, nothing we noticed ourselves noticing).

I've read several places[1] that the producers and/or director of the show didn't realize that Richard Coyle (Jeff Murdoch on Coupling) wasn't Welsh until the second season of that show.

[1] http://www.tv.com/people/richard-coyle/

I've had this funny song in my playlist for a long time. I used to listen to it when I didn't know any english and it's amazing how at the time I couldn't distinguish it from normal english, since often in songs it's hard to catch all the words (and in some cases you even have to find the lyrics to get them all right).

I must add that sounds in languages are a very strange thing. When my american friends who don't speak italian try to say something in fake-italian, sometimes the accent is so strange that I tend to assume they were speaking in english and I just didn't hear well. Then, only after they make it very explicit that they are trying to speak or sound italian, I change my mental setup and can guess what they are saying. Otherwise to me it sounds like something indecipherable. It is kind of accessing different areas of the brain based on which language I'm listening to. Which doesn't happen with actual americans or italians since in that case the accent itself is obvious and makes me switch immediately.

Now though I can really appreciate how close his accent is to the american accent.

But in general, I would say that this is a good occasion to look him up on youtube or any online (or not) music store, his music and his lyrics are great. He also made an album with Mina, who is recognized pretty much unanimously as the best italian female singer, ever.

Hah, yeah I totally get that :) The brain seems to have to know what language they're listening to before it can understand it. And it takes just slightly too long:)

I noticed this again when watching Iron Sky, a movie with both English and German text (I am Dutch, and can understand both--though English is easier for me). For some reason the cinema showed a version with German subtitles for the English parts instead of the other way around. It was very hard to understand, especially because some scenes were English with German accent or vice versa. I'd hear the start of a scene, and--subtitles or not--I needed a few seconds to determine the language before I could comprehend what they were saying. So I missed the first few seconds of many scenes, because at the same time there was a lot going on on the screen, making it very hard to keep up.

(I did watch the movie again with English subtitles, and caught much more of the jokes--such as a Brazilian resembling the Führer's moustache. Great movie)

http://thewire-hbo.com/2007/07/22/english-actors-in-the-wire...

Anyone else remember that latin pop song "Asereje" by Las Ketchup? You're probably dancing to it on your game console right now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFzyYYZsxGc

The chorus is a nonsense, a spanish-sounding reproduction of Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight"

This song made its biggest splash three years ago on Boing Boing: http://boingboing.net/2009/12/17/gibberish-rock-song.html

(Google trends graph http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Prisencolinensinainci... )

Pretty much the entirety of the Cocteau Twins discography is this. A few Enya songs as well.

Also: "Bork, bork, bork!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY_Yf4zz-yo

EDIT: Let's be honest here, quite a few ordinary pop songs are also gibberish masquerading as coherent language.

EDIT: Richard Feynman even got into the act once as a young man. Ironically, he was an English speaker doing gibberish Italian: http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-surely-youre-joking-mr-fe...

It's hard to bargle nawdle zouss;

With all these marbles in my mouth

Smells like Nirvana!

> Pretty much the entirety of the Cocteau Twins

Well, there's some discussion whether she invented a language to sing in or if she was just off her tits on heroin and LSD.

For the young 'uns:

Early, not pleasant to listen to - (http://youtu.be/AF-hic7hNpk) Later, nicer - (http://youtu.be/WORzTWzwtho) Her singing 'live' recorded from VH1 to show it's not just post-production (http://youtu.be/Xo-vh_q1xQQ)

Very listenable - (http://youtu.be/EIs6uc440Z4)

And again - (http://youtu.be/iD0STDHNM8A)

> Well, there's some discussion whether she invented a language to sing in or if she was just off her tits on heroin and LSD.

The difference?

Reminds me of when I was a child, didn't understand English (not my native language) yet, and heard American songs on the radio!

Perhaps Gangnam Style is more of a novelty in the English-speaking countries, where foreign pop music is uncommon, than in those countries where it is common: Italian teenagers might not care that much whether it is in Korean or English, whereas English teenagers will notice that they are dancing to a song whose lyrics they cannot possibly understand.

I'm a European and unless I focus, the lyrics of English songs just blends in with the instruments. The song has no meaning unless I want it to. But when I hear other languages, it's hard not to notice that I don't understand.

I am a European, and it depends on the country (and the age).

In a lot of European countries young people (up to 30+) have been taught English and they can follow an English song quite easily. Even in France, despite never admitting it in public. (This is especially true for music fans).

They might have some trouble with heavy stuff, like some lyric heavy Dylan songs or 500-wpm rap, but they can get most pop/dance songs alright.

Note that I didn't say that European teenagers wouldn't understand the English lyrics, but that they won't care that much about the language, if only because they are used to listening to music in other European languages.

That makes it seem as if English is the same as just another European language for a non English European. That is not really the case.

Most music and movie culture, especially for teenagers, is in fact English. Less often it's your own native language, and even more rarely (but still existant!) other European languages.

English is also the one non-native language you kind of learn automatically (unlike other languages we had to learn at school), due to being surrounded by it so much, and the internet.

Slightly off topic: When seeing one of the extremely rare movies made in my own country, I'm always surprised by how awesome it is to see something I actually can relate to, e.g. when they speak some juicy dialects or show some typical living room in a house as they look here. American movies always seem "fake" or something to me, and also always use the same dialect, but I wonder if for Americans they can actually relate to that just like I can relate to native movies of my own country :)

I know to parallel sets of lyrics for almost all top 80s disco and soul songs: one actual, and one misheard, from when I was a child and didn't speak English.

Only a few years ago I heard my all time favorite song growing up, except I now realize it's a female singer! Tracy Chapman tapes were very popular in Somalia, and I don't think any of us realized Mr Chapman was, in fact, a woman.

Even when we have seen her pictures! She might have even looked "manlier" than most androgynous stars of that time.

Thanks to APD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder), most songs sound like that to me (I can only understand fragments of most lyrics unless I google them). I love music and listen to a lot of it, but most of the time I like the sound and not the words.

I suspect that when I was younger, I had a similar issue without realizing it. I used to think all lyricists were higher than a kite any time they wrote anything. After getting a diagnosis late in life for a condition I was born with and getting healthier, as I got healthier, songs began sounding a lot more prosaic to me. Some guy that I thought was trying to catch "a moon train" was really catching the Noon train to meet his girlfriend. Overall, most songs became drastically less intriguing and whimsical-sounding.

Fwiw, songs by The Beatles still sounded the same to me as always. I have wondered if that somehow explains their popularity, that there is something about their music which is fundamentally easier for more people to hear correctly and, thus, it was more widely appreciated and struck fewer people as gibberish.

Interesting, what condition was this and how did you recover from it?

P.S.: If you miss those whimsical-sounding lyrics, there's always Purity Ring (band).

Oh, I have atypical cystic fibrosis -- in short, I have a long, long history of ear infections (and I am still wrestling with how to explain how I recovered, which I am trying to document at healthgazelle.com). Probably not directly relevant to your situation. Though I spent a lot of time on alternative med sites. Off the top of my head, my recollection is that some people with capd benefit from magnesium. My son, who suffers less from capd than he used to, says chocolate helped him.

Edit: iirc, chocolate is high in magnesium, so that might be why chocolate is one of the things which helped him.

Edit2: I have a long, long history of all kinds of cf related issues, but I think the ear infections are the likely connection to my history of miss-hearing things.

Interesting about the magnesium - I like chocolate, almonds and cashew nuts. All high in magnesium.

We tend to crave the things we need. If you need magnesium, you likely also need calcium and then there are a couple of other things you need to absorb calcium properly (I believe vitamins K and D). You could do a little googling, give it a whirl, see if self treating for a presumed chronic magnesium deficiency helps with your capd-like symptoms.

Best of luck.

That's pretty interesting. I feel like I have a hard time understanding people in group settings. It's not uncommon that I have to ask people to repeat themselves, and I feel I do this much more than other people. I'm also not great at understanding song lyrics, but I feel like most people can't figure them out either (based on all the faulty lyrics out there).

In one-on-one conversations, I'm usually fine though. Is this what you experience, or is it much more dramatic?

People with auditory processing problems are negatively impacted by background noise and tend to supplement their understanding of what was said with lip reading, often without consciously realizing it. So they tend to do much better in one on one discussions, which tend to have less background noise and are typically more conducive to lip reading than group settings.

This. Inability to separate out speech from background noise. I cannot have a conversation in a pub, club or bar where there's loud background music or noisy chatter. I can understand people perfectly fine in a quiet setting. Therefore I avoid noisy places, which does negatively impact social life (especially in younger years).

I am generally unable to comprehend the lyrics of most songs. For years I thought it was called "The Fire of Downtown" and was baffled when I found out it really was "The Final Countdown". In addition to that I am unable to understand anyone in (semi)noisy environments like bars, restaurants, etc. and am notoriously bad on the phone as soon as there is the slightest background noise on either end. All that, despite having excellent hearing when it comes to non-verbal sounds.

Until now I didn't even know APD existed, so thank you for mentioning and linking it here.

I've always been fascinated by "near language". Its an odd feeling as my brain recognizes the basic sounds and tries to find a foothold but fails.

There was a story posted here quite a while ago about a short movie made entirely in "english-like" language. I think it featured a couple arguing. Maybe someone can help me out here? It gave me the eery feeling of being a young child again listening to adults talking around me.

I believe there was a link to it in the main article comments.

There is a link, but there isn't a video at the other end it. That was probably it.

You're thinking of "Skwerl": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt4Dfa4fOEY

Thank you. That was it.

A similar effect can be heard in "Skwerl (How English sounds to non-English speakers)": http://youtu.be/Vt4Dfa4fOEY (speaking starts at 0m30s).

It's not quite as good, is it? I wonder if this effect is easier to achieve in a song or if it's more a case of how much time, talent, and effort goes into making it.

That last quote about American English sounding like "anger born out of resignation" is a bit ominous.

I'm fairly sure this Japanese band, White Ash, has nothing but pure gibberish as lyrics. I'm aware that some Japanese musicians, despite not really being able to effectively pronounce English words, will sing in English. Here though, I cannot pick out any English:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5RmmIS1AIQ

If I'd only heard the music, I would've assumed it was an American band.

*fixed "gibberish", had it spelled wrong

  "I sang it with an angry tone because the theme was
   important. It was an anger born out of resignation.
   I brought to light the fact that people don't
   communicate."

He sang it with an angry tone because he was angry. Nothing there says that "American English sounds like anger born out of resignation to non-English speakers."

Note that immediately after that point in the article:

But is that really what American English sounds like?

"Yes," he says. "Exactly like that."

I apologize if it's not totally clear in my original comment, but I was referring to Celentano's affirmation that American English sounds like anger born out of resignation.

From what I understand, he's not saying that, the anger is towards the lack of communication. English sounds the way he speaks, but the tone (and the question) is unrelated.

As an italian, I can tell you American English may sound many ways but I'd never define it "angry".

Out of curiosity, how would you describe it? As a American I can't get enough distance to tell.

As an Australian, I'd say American English sounds loud.

ah, good question! I think "boasting" is the correct word. Loud, self-important, maybe pretentious? But not in an unfriendly way, rather in a silly one. Think of an overdone John Wayne gag.

To be honest, I think this has more to do with subconscious cultural references, rather than the sound itself.

E.g. the sound of en_us always evokes Italians speaking in gibber-american-english[0] rather than some martin luther king jr's speech.

[0] stuff like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1joXNHs4_ME

I didn't want to excessively prejudice the answer, but to me English sounds like a relatively harsh language. Every other language always seems to sound smoother, except maybe really fast Spanish and to some extent Russian, which, if not "harsh" per se, often sounds angry to me, or with all the slurred-soundings Zs in it, drunk. No connection to the stereotype of drunk Russians intended; one wonders if there is a connection there, though. (Though it could also come from reality; from what I've seen of the statistics "drunk Russian", alas, has a lot of truth to it.)

What really opened my eyes was German; if you read German with English phonetics, it sounds awful, though it's sort of fun to do. But when it is read or spoken correctly, it's a more soft, flowing language than English.

Personally, I still read that as, "I sang it in an angry tone. American English sounds angry." The 'born out of resignation' part seems to be his source of the anger that he was singing with.

This Italian band, which have a nonsensical name, should cover that song! http://www.supercanifradiciadespiaredosi.it/

The difference between Celentano and Enya/Sigur Ros/etc is that Celentano was trying to sound English and imitate a true language. The other bands were using their voices more as another instrument; going for sounds that fit the music.

Keisuke Kuwata doesn't sing gibberish but he has a very distinctive vocal style based on the American blues/folk/rock singers he grew up on. The lyrics are littered with English of course but even the Japanese lyrics are delivered with a pseudo-English rhythm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p3iNFsiv9Y

I can't for the life of me remember where I had originally seen this video, but the version I remember seeing was this, which looks like a (visual) remix and is the far more nonsensical (and memorable) one, IMO:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZXcRqFmFa8

This is one with English sub-titles:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz04IBZqfFE

You saw it on reddit, a while ago.

No...it was bakadesuyo http://www.bakadesuyo.com/what-english-sounds-like-to-foreig...

I knew what site, just not how to spell it

In case anybody is interested, the blond singer is Raffaella Carrà.

EDIT: I just noticed that it is mentioned in the origival YouTube page. Anyway I am not removing the comment, because she was really a sex symbol, for all southern Europe in the '70s!

The trilled 'r' sound at 0:29 is definitely not American English. Native English speakers from America can hardly pull that off, which is why it's funny to hear them try speaking spanish.

Songwriters should use this as a designer uses lorem ipsum.

Songwriters do use their version of lorem ipsum.

That said, they cannot use one and only set of lyrics (such as the above) for all songs they write, because the appropriate "lorem ipsum" for each song depends on its form (melody, rhythm, number of verses, etc).

They (well, we) use those "lorem ipsum" placeholder lyrics when they first compose the music, to mark the phrasing they want to achieve. It can be either gibberish or meaningless rhymes.

In one famous example, Paul McCartney famously wrote Yesterday's lyrics based on the placeholder: "Scrambled eggs. Oh my baby how I love your legs.".

More infamously, Phil Collins "Sussudio" was a placeholder lyric that never got replaced.

I think it helped that the dance video is pretty awesome :)

This reminds me of Charlie Chaplin's Nonsense song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0daS_SDCT_U

There is a band called Fantomas that does something very similar. The voice is more of an instrument that moves the listener through the music.

Try listening to old Cocteau Twins sometime. Similar effect, except Elizabeth Fraser is actually singing in English.

As an aside, Mike Patton apparently speaks Italian fluently, having been married to an Italian woman, and IIRC, he recently did an album of old Italian pop songs. Perhaps he and Celentano have sung some of the same tunes, which is kind of a funny thought.

Sigur Rós regularly does that, including all vocals on their 4th album "()": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vonlenska#Vonlenska

Yeah English listen by an Italian sound exactly like that... (I am Italian).

Well, also other artist tried to do the same years early, but it was written.

Reminds me of hearing pop songs in Asian restaurants that sound like English but I listen more closely and understand none of the words.

They may have been partly in English. Lots of K/J-Pop songs nowadays have English hooks, or use loanwords.

Heeeeeeey sexy ladeh :p

I would have sworn that this would be the story of "We Drink Ritalin": http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/ritalin

If I recall it correctly its writer was Japanese and the performer(s) were Italian making for one rather unintelligible song.

Hi guys, you definitely got your revenge here: http://youtu.be/9JhuOicPFZY

It's amazing how entertaining that was without color or cgi.

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