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[Multilingual Monday Music] Apologize
Can I just say, I'm amazed how many different language covers there are of this One Republic song? Apparently it gained not only local popularity, but also popularity abroad ...
The band ТАйМСКВЕР, "Timesquare", covers it in Russian ...
... and someone does the German version, making it "Zu Spät", "Too Late".
And some other people (no idea ( Read more... ) -
[Multilingual Monday] Thursday
Yay a song in three languages! I'm a big fan of La Oreja de Van Gogh -- yes, even with their new vocalist, and I'm still waiting for a new freakin' album! -- and I'd posted before their song "Jueves," about the Madrid bombing years ago. But little did I know that this was also performed not only with the lead singer of LOVG, but also Mira Awad ( ( Read more... ) -
[Multilingual Monday] The "Oh Crap Was Yesterday Monday??" Edition
Another random Multilingual Monday for you, with at least two separate themes:
- TOWN NAMES INTERPRETED IN OTHER LANGUAGES: Carl and I hung out with Israeli Li'or and her American boyfriend on Christmas Eve, and many topics had come up (Li'or is fascinated with Christmas because it simply doesn't happen where she lives, for example), and then she ( Read more... )
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[Multilingual Monday] Never ever
I was asked about a Hebrew variant to "when pigs fly" recently, and I thought: what a great idea for an article! I could gather various language versions of this phrase!
Of course, Wikipedia beat me to it. Damn it.
But their foreign list is still fairly sparse. For example, Amharic has የህልም እንጀራ, yähləm ənjära, "injera in a dream". Japanese seems ( Read more... ) -
[Multilingual Monday] Imitated languages
I was doing Wikipedia Roulette (where you start at an article and then end up somewhere completely unrelated), and as I read articles about various racial slurs I came to ones about people imitating the Chinese language as a slur (this particular article referenced Shaquille O'Neal having the meaningless message of "'Ching-chong-yang-wah-ah-so" for ( Read more... ) -
[Multilingual Monday] And I am telling you ...
I find command forms in various languages to be fascinating. In English, "Drive!", "Go!", "Fight!", etc., are all command forms but also identical to the present tense verb. Likewise, using "Don't" negates the above verbs -- "Don't drive!", "Don't go!", "Don't fight!", etc. But in many languages the command form is NOT this straightforward.
WHO ( Read more... ) -
[Multilingual Monday] Knowing
One of the sticking points I've noticed in many languages is how certain words in English will have multiple possible words in another language. "Know" is one such word; in most languages I've studied there are possible words that could be used to mean "know" -- depending upon how one means "know."
Spanish has saber as in, ¿Sabes dónde está el ( Read more... ) -
[Multilingual Monday] Lost In Translation III
A few weeks ago we were story about a bunch of shlixim having met up with a number of American Jews for some event, and the Israelis tried to figure out how they were getting back to where they were staying. One had turned to an American girl, and asked, "... so, you will be my tramp, right ( Read more... ) -
[Multilingual Monday] Understanding song lyrics
I love music written in other languages -- obviously. There are styles, points of view, and more that I wouldn't hear otherwise if I just stuck to English music. Plus I'm a linguaphile, so really this is no shock. It's, in fact, what drew me initially to Eurovision -- before the free language rule, each country had to sing in one of its official ( Read more... ) -
[Multilingual Monday] Same idea, different conjugation
I'm, admittedly, fascinated when certain constructions end up requiring different verb conjugations in order to state the same thing. Different languages have different verb systems and handle concepts of time and completion in a different way. English, for example, traditionally is thought to have three "tenses" (telling "past", "present", " ( Read more... )
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