A bit of an odd question....

[wohl_der_nacht]

I downloaded this song from a Jim Steinman site yesterday:
Halali a Halal
It's obviously a version of "Tot zu sein ist komisch" from TdV, but I can't work out what language it's in!! Any ideas, anyone? "Halali a Halal" was the title it was given on the site where I found it, but I couldn't find any more information about it.

Comments

[dongtian]

Should be Hungarian

[fyrie]

Halal is death/dead in hungarian :)

[valancystar]

Hmm, Halal is death in Hungarian but that's sure not how the song is called in the Hungarian production (where it's "Meghalni oly morbid"). I'm not able to download it now so that I could check what it is.

[turtleyq]

I listened to the song and it definitely sounds like Hungarian to me, but it's not the lyrics that were used in the show. I wonder if this was recorded before the show opened in Budapest...

[venefica32]

Yes, it's Hungarian but, as has been already pointed out, it's not the same version that was used in the Budapest production; in fact, the lyrics are completely different. So I don't think it has much to do with that translation.

According to my dictionary, the word "haláli" is slang and means something like "nice" or "neat". So basically the title would be "Death is neat" or something like that. As the two words are quite similar, the title-phrase is a nice word-play but, somehow, I have hard time imagining Magda using slang-ish words...

But bear in mind that I don't actually speak Hungarian so these linguistic musings are really neither here nor there... :-)

[meganphntmgrl]

It might be a play on the fact that some people seem to persist in thinking "Tot zu sein ist komisch" means "Death is fun" as opposed to "Death is strange".

[meganphntmgrl]

As in, it might have been translated with that thought in mind.