“there are always newcomers who haven't had their brain melted by it”
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Speaking of gibberish english: I know this has been on YouTube for 10 years, but there are always newcomers who haven't had their brain melted by it: this video
Adriano Celentano - Prisencolinensinainciusol
10.4M views · Dec 9, 2012 · 3:40 · 6 HN recommenders · 17 mentions · discussed 2016–2024
A 1972 song by Adriano Celentano whose lyrics are nonsense syllables designed to sound like American English to non-English speakers. It is a rock and rap-flavored novelty track with a video.
Why Hacker News points people here: It comes up whenever threads touch on fake languages, accents, or gibberish that sounds plausible, and commenters like sharing it with people who haven't heard it.
“For anyone who hasn't seen it before, here's a song by an Italian composer made to sound like American English”HN comment, 2021
What Hacker News said 17
“There's a fantastic English-sounding song by an italian singer”
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There's a fantastic English-sounding song by an italian singer this video Prisencolinensinainciusol by Adriano Celentano. It hurts my brain when I try to pick out meaning from the phenomes.
“Works amazingly well.”
Gibberish song imitating American English
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The song "Prisencolinensinainciusol" has a similar effect: it's meant to sound exactly like American English to non-native speakers, but is actually just gibberish. Works amazingly well. this video
“For anyone who hasn't seen it before, here's a song by an Italian composer made to sound like American English”
Shows English speakers what English sounds like to others
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For anyone who hasn't seen it before, here's a song by an Italian composer made to sound like American English, but since it only uses nonsense even English speakers can get a bit of a feel for what we sound like to others: this video
“My favorite is the Italian music video of a high school class where they sing in made up English.”
Music video singing made-up English
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I love foreign fantasy representations of America. My favorite is the Italian music video of a high school class where they sing in made up English. this video
“Quite catchy.”
Song about the inability to communicate, in fake English
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I call your mis-understood English song, and raise you one song purposefully written to use fake-English sounding 'words': > The song is intended to sound to its Italian audience as if it is sung in English spoken with an American accent, however the lyrics are deliberately unintelligible gibberish with the exception of the words "all right".[8][9] Andrew Khan, writing in The Guardian, later described the sound as reminiscent of Bob Dylan's output from the 1980s.[9] > Celentano's intention with the song was not to create a humorous novelty song but to explore communication barriers. The intent was to demonstrate how English sounds to people who do not understand the language proficiently. "Ever since I started singing, I was very influenced by American music and everything Americans did. So at a certain point, because I like American slang—which, for a singer, is much easier to sing than Italian—I thought that I would write a song which would only have as its theme the inability to communicate. And to do this, I had to write a song where the lyrics didn't mean anything."[6] * link * Audio-only: link * M/V: this video Quite catchy.
“he created a song to represent what English sounds like to non-native speakers”
Song designed to sound like English to non-natives
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Hot damn, technology is catching up with humans' manual creations. Your video is reminiscent of Adriano Celentano's song "Prisencolinensinainciusol"[1]–whereby he created a song to represent what English sounds like to non-native speakers[2]. [1] this video [2] link
“I was hoping for something like Prisencolinensinainciusol's supposed American-English-to-Italians”
Example of fake-English sound for Italians
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Despite the title, there's not much commentary on how Chinese sounds to Korea and Japan. I was hoping for something like Prisencolinensinainciusol's supposed American-English-to-Italians: link this video
“the entire song is nonsense lyrics made to sound like English.”
1972 song with nonsense lyrics made to sound like English
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Reminds me of a song from 1972 by an Italian comedian. The song is called "Prisencolinensinainciusol" which means...well, nothing. It's gibberish. In fact, the entire song is nonsense lyrics made to sound like English. this video
“Reminds me of the Italian song made up of English sounding gibberish”
Italian song of English-sounding gibberish
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Reminds me of the Italian song made up of English sounding gibberish (although some real words do sneak in, like "alright") this video
“more interestingly”
Example of music not needing to be understood
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> I suspect what's going on here is that in music, it doesn't matter if you understand it right the first time. So there's this link and more interestingly this video
“But it would be the equivalent of Prisencolinensinainciusol”
Analogy for generating plausible-sounding but meaningless language
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Only if it was trained on a corpus of existing translations. Just training on existing sounds might give us a whale sound generator. But it would be the equivalent of Prisencolinensinainciusol: this video
“Heck you might be a full blown Italian who can't say a word in English but with the right kind of jacket it comes out a banger”
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Well, no. This is a reasonable guess turned strangely confidently wrong and opinionated. Voice acting is quite literally done a sentence or at most a paragraph at a time. Often the recording order is completely different from the script. An actor may very well record his final scene on the first day of a project, after the whole character arc has transpired. But you know, acting. They get fed a line with stage direction and do a bunch of takes and somehow it works. Heck you might be a full blown Italian who can't say a word in English but with the right kind of jacket it comes out a banger: this video You mention Eleven labs being ahead, check out Suno. There is no LLM-scale anything involved there. The voice in this context is a musical instrument and there are lots of viable ways to tackle this problem domain.
“an italian wrote a top 40 song that sounded to 1970s non-english speakers as if it had had english lyrics”
Top 40 song that sounded like English to non-speakers
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Using generative Natural Intelligence, an italian wrote a top 40 song that sounded to 1970s non-english speakers as if it had had english lyrics: this video (compare "abstract comics", "asemic writing")
“These two songs are the closest I could find in an analogous auditory form.”
Evokes familiar yet alien uncanny feeling
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This is largest juxtaposition between familiarity and nostalgia against an outright alien uncanny facade of fiction. A dissociative, delirious, memory. Orthogonal to our current experience, but barely. These two songs are the closest I could find in an analogous auditory form. this video link
“Hilarious.”
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An english gibberish song: this video . I could not find the original that I heard, but this is most of it. Hilarious.
“And I bet it will sound like this”
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Well, now I know what's going on if the real world starts looking like that. And I bet it will sound like this: this video