Best and worst languages for song? (Music, Movies, TV & Radio) Language Learning Forum

Best and worst languages for song?
Tags: Singing \| Hit List \| Foreign Languages
Language Learning Forum : Music, Movies, TV & Radio

45 messages over 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next >>

fabriciocarraro
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Brazil
russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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Speaks: Portuguese*, English^B2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French
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Message 9 of 45

04 April 2012 at 5:42pm | IP Logged

English is pretty good.
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Chung
Diglot
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Message 10 of 45

04 April 2012 at 6:57pm | IP Logged

It's hard to say for me since my linguistic exposure is rather limited but I haven't heard a song that was bad because of the language used rather than the singer, singing style, lyrics or melody, as examples.

I do however find the songs below especially pleasing, and the language adds to the attraction (or at least doesn't seem to work against them).

HUNGARIAN
Te rongyos élet [a show tune from the operetta Csárdáskirálynő - "Csárdás Queen"]

KAZAKH
Dudarai and (Folk song) (don't know the title and can't read what's printed at the beginning. I suspect that it's Kazakh from China since the Kazakhs there use modified Arabic script rather than the modified Cyrillic of their kin in the former USSR)

NORTHERN SAAMI
Iđitguovssu
Ii iđit vel
Ođđa máilbmi

POLISH
Świdryga i Midryga

SKOLT SAAMI
Tuõddâr Casanova
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druckfehler
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Germany
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Message 11 of 45

05 April 2012 at 12:09am | IP Logged

I'm impressed by how great Portuguese (especially Brazilian) and Samoan sound when sung. Probably because they're vowel-heavy and use many voiced consonants.

For Korean and Hebrew I think their (partly) agglutinative structure lends itself quite well to lyrics.

I'm also impressed how well Portuguese lends itself to rhyme (helped by the many -a/-o endings). I suspect this is generally the case with romance languages.
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espejismo
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Russian Federation
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Message 12 of 45

05 April 2012 at 12:57am | IP Logged

tarvos wrote:

I don't know about rock sung in Italian, but Italian bands singing in English is usually a huge fail.

I don't know about rock, but there was this one instance where an Italian pop singer captivated the English-speaking world with a song in English.

Kyle Corrie wrote:

German is not a language that was meant to be sung.

Evidence to the contrary.
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vonPeterhof
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Speaks: Russian*, English^C2, Japanese, German
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Message 13 of 45

05 April 2012 at 6:08am | IP Logged

Chung wrote:

KAZAKH
Dudarai and (Folk song) (don't know the title and can't read what's printed at the beginning. I suspect that it's Kazakh from China since the Kazakhs there use modified Arabic script rather than the modified Cyrillic of their kin in the former USSR)

My Arabic script is a bit rusty, but I think it says "Jalğan-ay". And yes, the video description places it in Xinjiang, but my Kazakh isn't good enough for me to be able to tell if there are any significant differences from Kazakh as it is spoken in Kazakhstan.
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atama warui
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Message 14 of 45

05 April 2012 at 6:18am | IP Logged

Here we go, 40 languages. Check for yourself which ones you like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1xf8Dsc4as
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Chung
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Message 15 of 45

05 April 2012 at 6:29am | IP Logged

vonPeterhof wrote:

Thanks for that. Too bad that I know nothing in Kazakh (but it's on the to-do list...) even though I like what I've heard of it in song so far.

atama warui wrote:

Here we go, 40 languages. Check for yourself which ones you like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1xf8Dsc4as

Damn the man! I gotta get some sleep but how can I not stay up to watch that clip?
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vonPeterhof
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Message 16 of 45

05 April 2012 at 7:15am | IP Logged

Марк wrote:

tonal languages are the worst because they loose their tones. languages without stress,
phonemic length and tone are the best.

What Ari said. Also, why is phonemic length a problem? In Japanese they normally just have one beat for short vowels and two beats for long vowels.

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