28 March 2010

This is totally related to linguistics. And awesomeness.

by Cecily
I am super obsessed with this video lately:



It is an Italian music video from the olden days of the 1970s, in which the Italian pop star singer makes up words that he thinks sound like American English. And does extremely, insanely great dance moves to them.

Here's why it's related to linguistics: Those words are gibberish! But, people have brains that like to see faces in clouds and hear words in noises. So there are a bunch of versions of the video with "English" "subtitles". And, depending on how much you can hear, when you listen to the [same] song and you see [different] words on the screen, your brain totally thinks you can hear whichever words are up there. It's like magic!







One day soon I am gonna spend an entire weekend practicing all these dance moves. Watch out.

6 comments:

  1. This is awesome. Have you seen any of the videos with English subtitles for non-English songs?
    Benny Lava and Moskau are probably the best.

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  2. Cecily! This is the best!

    sean

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  3. I'm particularly enchanted by the little dramatic transition dance at 1:55. I think after I learn it, I'll start doing it to signal that my lecture is finished and class is over.

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  4. The really challenging part will be getting your students to dance in their seats.

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  5. The REALLY challenging part will be getting them to wear those gigantic colorful bows in their hair.

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  6. this is an amazing video. hope you're going to whip out these moves at the science party! and that someone is filming...

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