More excitement and tension than the World Cup

[rainsinger]

The best thing about the Eurovision Song Contest (besides the garish trashiness of most of the entries) has to be Terry Wogan's running commentary (every year he starts drinking Irish Cream from the start, and he's doing double shots by song seven -as Terry said, you have to- and by the end of the night he's so plastered that he gets more and more

Comments

[smallblakflower]

Hurrah for the Eurovision, personally I joined other students here and invented a drinking game - it most notable involved a large swig folr every political vote or amusing/sarcastic/snidey comment from Terry Wogan - joy!

I was rooting for Austria's boy band, alas I was dissapointed...

That drinking game sounds excellent

[rainsinger]

Although I think my alcohol capacity would not be up to the experience and I'd give up the good fight by about vote 6

Lol, Austria's boy band were probably one of the few occasions in my life where I felt inspired to utter the words *Busted is better*

[guihong]

I wish the US would do something like that :). In fact, I wish the world would do that.

gui

[rainsinger]

I agree :D Although it wouldn't be that much pleasure without Terry Wogan's commentary.

[lillfive]

I wish BBC America would pick up that show and let us in
America see it! "American Idol" sounds like a nursery
school show next to these Eurovision contests!

Also...I'm very excited you are writing about someone
named Zeljko. Could you type out what the name would
sound like pronounced out loud???There is an actor over
here in America whose first name is Zeljko. He's on Law
and Order and Six Feet Under a lot- and in lots of movies-
and I've been wondering since I was little exactly how
the name is pronounced.

In my head it's pronounced "Sheliko." But I have a large
feeling that's terribly wrong :D

[rainsinger]

Hmmmm. This is complicated. I've been wrecking my brains on how to translate this to English phonetically because English does not contain the right sounds.

Zeljko- the name comes from the root word Zelja (desire) and it can mean Desired One ( a bit like the name Desiree I suppose)

Your pronunciation of *Sheliko* is actually not that far off, you've got the spirit of the word right. Except it's not a Sh, but a Zh sound (think of how you pronounce Zsa-Zsa Gabor or the last syllable of the word collage)

The Lj sound is also one you don't have in English, and it's an alteration of the normal L sound. In Serbo-Croat the J phoneme is not a *Jay* sound but *Yuh* (like the beginning phoneme of *you* or *yard*) and you add it to the l so it ends up sounding like *lyuh*

So roughly, it's Zh-eh-lyuh-koh (but Zheliko would not be a bad approximation)

[lillfive]

Thank you! Now when I see his name on the credits I'll
know how to say his name. And I find your language
fascinating :)

[verlaine]

I was happy throughout the voting that Serbia & Montenegro were doing so well, for your sake. But not as happy as I was that the country of my forefathers triumphed at the end of the night! Go Ukraine!

[rainsinger]

Ukraine was indeed fabulous (and Ruslana is a babe). :) I thought you would be thrilled.