What I'm listening to right now.
Adriano Celentano, "Prisencolinensinainciusol." This song is nonsense. Literally. It's an Italian comedian's effort, in 1972, to sing in English without using English – he said he wanted to make a song about the failure to communicate. Which makes sense – more than the song does, right? Anyway, the melody and beat are quite earwormy, actually.
Lyrics
Prisencolinensinainciusol
In de col men seivuan
prisencolinensinainciusol ol rait
Uis de seim cius nau op de seim
Ol uait men in de colobos dai
Trrr – ciak is e maind beghin de col
Bebi stei ye push yo oh
Uis de seim cius nau op de seim
Ol uoit men in de colobos dai
Not s de seim laikiu de promisdin
Iu nau in trabol lovgiai ciu gen
In do camo not cius no bai for lov so
Op op giast cam lau ue cam lov ai
Oping tu stei laik cius go mo men
Iu bicos tue men cold dobrei goris
Oh sandei
Ai ai smai sesler
Eni els so co uil piso ai
In de col men seivuan
Prisencolinensinainciusol ol rait
Ai ai smai senflecs
Eni go for doing peso ai
Prisencolinensinainciusol ol rait
Uel ai sint no ai giv de sint
Laik de cius nobodi oh gud taim lev feis go
Uis de seim et seim cius go no ben
Let de cius end kai for not de gai giast stei
Ai ai smai senflecs
Eni go for doing peso ai
In de col mein seivuan
Prisencolinensinainciusol ol rait
Lu nei si not sicidor
Ah es la bebi la dai big iour
Ai aismai senflecs
Eni go for doing peso ai
In de col mein seivuan
Prisencolinensinainciusol ol rait
Lu nei si not sicodor
Ah es la bebi la dai big iour
[dialy log: walking, 7.5km]
Thanks, Jared, for this gem. I find it fascinating how the lyrics so perfectly match the sound and flow of contemporary American English that my brain subconsciously goes into overload trying to decipher it, incapable of disregarding it for what it is — incoherent gobbledygook. It goes well with your recent posts on AI translation and the “hallucinatory” results current AI translation machines can produce when fed certain gibberish, which I nonetheless do not interpret as a fundamental inability of AI translation machines to distinguish everyday language from gibberish.
Somewhere between formal language and gibberish there is also the pseudo-language of advertising. I vaguely recall slowly gaining the ability over the years after I moved to Germany to recognize artificial ad words as such and to understand their intended connotations. One of the many aspects that, in my eyes, defines near-native fluency, yet perhaps something that AI translation, by virtue of its vast reservoir of language usage statistics and its strength in recognizing associations of a fundamentally statistical nature, will cope with more easily.
On the subject of language proficiency and predicable usage, I find it interesting how friends, apparently biased by their knowledge that I am a non-native speaker, will often correct me for using the “wrong” word if I make a pun, before recognizing that the “mistake” was 100% intentional and fitting.
But perhaps this is also due to an overall lesser affection for puns in Germany than in English-speaking countries, perhaps due to the fact that German’s strong grammar and long words makes punning more difficult than in English. So is it their language that makes Germans such serious people? Modern German pop music — much of which is finally now in German — seems to be helping to break that ice. Or is it that the Germans are writing better German lyrics because they’re less somber than previous generations? Listening to Adriano Celentano makes me think that the sound and flow of a language has a very strong influence on the music we can make from it. Circle complete.