Tuesday, December 15, 2009

The Best Thing of Today: What English Sounds Like to Foreigners

I like this thing a whole lot. It's so good, it puts SNL sketches to shame. The premise of this piece is to show what English sounds like to foreigners. The caption on this video reads: "An Italian singer wrote this song with gibberish to sound like English. If you've ever wondered what other people think Americans sound like, this is it."

Only, it's not just any Italian singer who's making the point. It's musical giant and performance artist par excellence Adriano Celentano. I'm partial to Celentano as he is one of the very few modern Italian artists whose work, for the most park, begs for my continued attention. And if you have seen Fellini's filmic masterpiece La Dolce Vita, you will have also seen a very young Celentano sing and dance a-la-Elvis. If you haven't experienced La Dolce Vita, do so.

This is simply a genius exercise in phonetics, culture, artistic mannerisms, and parody. I never saw this growing up so, tip of the hat to todaysbigthing for making me aware of it.







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