Prisencolinensinainciusol

Those who think rap music began in 1979 haven't heard the 1972 song Prisencolinensinainciusol, by Adriano Celentano. The lyrics are neither English nor Italian; they are pure gibberish. Someone called this "what English sounds like to a non-English speaking person." Okay then.

Comments

[Brother Bill]

Cool!

[Jay-R]

I am not a native English speaker but I have been exposed to the language since childhood...and this sounds just downright weird.

[Dan]

Maybe it should be no surprise that the Romans, as it were, arrived at perfect forms of disco. (All that practice in the Arena.) This makes me feel better about speaking fake Japanese and Navajo.

[Kelsey]

Haha...if I hadn't known this was gibberish I would have thought I was just having trouble making out the lyics. The sounds could definitely be a part of English words. In fact, my brain was trying really hard to make sense of they were saying!

[Dude]

Kelsey,

I was thinking the same thing. It's like hearing a song for the first time in a club and you're really drunk, you just think you know what they're saying.

[Johnny Cat]

That rocked my socks!

[Rafael]

There is a Spanish hit song from 2002 with the title of "Aserejé / The Ketchup Song". The chorus of this song is the first few lines of Sugarhill's Gang's "Rapper's Delight" but quasi phonetically in Spanish. I know about both songs but found this entry in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ketchup_Song

[MarMar]

I've often wondered how English sounds to a non-English speaker, which makes this song completely fascinating to me. And you can dance to it! :-D

[Justin]

It sounds like your average Bob Dylan sng to me.

[The Creature]

Lurv it!

[karl]

The song is sooooo cool. The lyrics really do sound like they're in English. This song SHOULD have been a Eurovision entry, but I think the Italians have other things to do during 1972.

[yanyan]

This is crazy! All html will be ESCAPED

[Anathème]

That's rather cool, and it really does sound like English when you don't understand it.

[nick]

how is this rap? sounds like every other song from the, cool with the "english" though

[Crispy]

This is like listening to sting sing. You can only understand the last three words of a sentence.
ALL RAIGHH?

[P2]

Just listen to this song at full power on your stereo - it'll blow your head off! :-)
(try to get a better quality though than from this utoob vid)

[Wyatt]

I like it, but I don't know why. Why is that you think?

[TerraByte]

I have a hearing problem so almost all song lyrics sound like this to me, at least at first.

I love the beat and the brass. I can't stop listening to this. I wish there were a translation of the Italian in the classroom scene. Also, who is the woman with the dark brown hair in the classroom? She's featured as if we should know who she is.

[Roberto]

Hi, I'm italian (so sorry for my english :P)

The traslation:
-Listen, professor...
-Yes, tell me.
-how come you wrote a song with strange words which mean nothing?

The dark haired woman is Claudia Mori, Adriano Celentano's wife.

[A]

LOL

[Al]

LOLLOL

[robb]

this is weird.
just weird.

[MJN]

I don't think it's the words that sound similar to American English, but the accent.

[COSMO]

I DIG IT

[Gerund Dipthong MD]

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

there are many gibberish songs: Maresey dotes and dosie dotes and little lambsie-divesies,I am a walrus,gibberish by relient k, etc.

hurray for gibberish of all kinds .. anything to alter a mundane existence is welcome

[Mark]

The question is, does he sing it the same--is the gibberish the same--every time?

[Miss Cellania]

Yes, its the same every time. This was a big hit in Italy, and fans learned to sing along with it.

[Some Other Dude]

Come on first rap song, rap was derived from spoken word jazz poetry and blues from the 1930’s and on. just another case of a white man stealing culture and passing it off as their own, Elvis anyone. If you want to get technical rap (hip-hop) was derived from slave spirituals that were derived from African folk music that the enslaved Africans brought with them to America. What a crock of shit white people have no culture, the major cultural contribution the white man has given the world is pain and suffering just look at McDonald’s.

[harry schwartz]

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

[tahrey]

I've had trouble making out the lyrics on some ostensibly plain english songs before, and some parts of this seem clearer... though it's clearly a non native speaker singing about it, the syllable forms, inflections, etc and even some of the accent is clearly english. Very cleverly constructed. I think you could break some people's heads by using this as muzak in a mall, elevator, switchboard etc. Also, maybe it sounds better backwards?

[Bob Weymouth]

Ya can't touch this.....my, my, my , my......great music and beat. I would give it an 85 but the lyrics are unintelligible.