How to account for the more than 650 million YouTube views of “Gangnam Style”? That jaunty dance surely deserves some credit, but might the faucalized voice and aspirated consonants of the Korean language play a part as well? It may seem unlikely, though perhaps no more unlikely than everything else about Psy’s megahit.
“Gangnam Style” is the first smash foreign-language song in the United States in years―and, with any hope, a sign of more to come―but it’s hardly the first. In the 1950s and 1960s you could turn on the radio and hear a tune in Italian (“Volare, ” 1958), German (“Sailor” 1960), or Xhosa (“Pata Pata, ” 1966). Pop hasn’t gone entirely monolingual since: A Latin music boom emerged in the 1990s, giving rise to stars like Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin, who occasionally sing in Spanish. Given that some 50 million people in the United States are of Hispanic origin, the market is certainly viable, and some Spanish-language songs have enjoyed crossover success. (The ’90s also saw the odd pop success of actual Latin: thosechanting monks and Enigma’s Sadeness (Part 1)). But the sort of multilingualism that allowed for both a French-language song (“Domenique”) and a Japanese one (“Sukiyaki”) to become No. 1 on the pop chart the same year (1963) has dwindled significantly. A non-English-language song hasn’t topped Billboard’s Hot 100 since Los Lobos’ version of “La Bamba” in 1987 (not so fast, “Macarena” fans―half the lyrics of that 1996 song were sung in English).
This is a shame for a number of reasons. English-only listening habits deprive us of the natural rhythm and melody of other languages―the nasal vowels of French, the alveolar trills of Portuguese, the consonant clusters of Czech. That most of us don’t understand the words only allows us to better appreciate the phonology of a language and concentrate on the human voice as a musical instrument. Those throat-clearing sounds you hear in German? That’s the voiceless velar fricative, and it adds a wonderful percussiveness to “99 Luftbalons.” English speakers don’t have it; it’s one reason the Anglicized version of Nena’s 1984 hit falls flat.
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Given the history of pop, an English translation of "Gangnam Style" may not be far off. I don’t speak a word of Korean, but my guess is it would be something of a letdown. And unnecessary, too. Thanks to After the Fire’s English version of "Der Kommissar" we know the song is about druggy underground folk, but we lose the swagger of Falco’s staccato German from the original. Others, from France’s Edith Piaf to Germany’s Rammstein, have had no problem attracting audiences who have no idea of what they’re singing about. With Piaf’s doleful delivery, do you need to know French to know the story of “Mon Dieu” is a sad one?
Language’s effect on music can take unexpected forms. A 2002 study in the cognitive science journal Cognition found that a culture’s dominant language influences the rhythmic structures of its instrumental music. In a 2006 study published in Psychology of Learning and Motivation, McGill University researchers write that Spanish features a “regular beat pattern in which each syllable coincides approximately with a beat, whereas stress-timed languages like English tend to have beats on stressed syllables.” In other words, languages each have their own rhythm, so certain languages tend to pair better with certain rhythmic patterns.
Despite this rhythmic-linguistic hurdle, some singers do OK shifting from one tongue to another. Shakira toggles back and forth effortlessly between Spanish and English, and the Beatles boosted record sales with German versions of their early recordings. Abba frequently recorded multiple versions of their songs in Swedish, English, French, and German. But it can be tricky for other artists. Whether it was David Lee Roth’s less-than-convincing accent or an inherent incongruity between the language and SoCal hair metal, Diamond Dave’s Spanish-language version of Eat ‘Em and Smile failed to tap into the Latin market as hoped.
In any case, international charts make it clear that English now serves as pop’s lingua franca. Last week’s German Top 10 featured only two songs in German and six in English (the other two were an instrumental and “Gangnam Style”). The Danish and French Top 10 charts each have seven English-language songs.[page]
Even in the annual Eurovision contest―in which a few dozen European countries each enter a song―English dominates. Seven of the top 10 winning songs in 2011 were sung entirely in English, and the other three were partially in English. This year one-half of the songs by the 10 finalists were in English, though kudos to Russia for submitting a song partially in Udmurt, which is spoken in the Russian republic of Udmurtia, and is surely one of pop music’s most underrepresented languages.
Are some languages more musical than others? It’s entirely subjective, of course, but linguistic phonetician Doug Honorof says languages with a lot of vowels have an advantage. “Vowels are easier to sing than consonants, ” says Honorof, who recently worked as a dialect coach for the show Elementary. “That’s because the whole vocal tract is more open during a vowel.” It’s the plosive consonants―those that cause the airflow to stop―that tend to trip up singers, he says. The poet and Yale University professor J.D. McClatchy, who has won praisefor his translations of opera librettos, agrees that vowels play a big part, at least when it comes to opera.
“Italian has a rather small vocabulary, but because of the beauty of its vowels, it tends to sound better, ” he says. And French, with its evenly stressed syllables “has that kind of musical euphoniousness.” English has a more nuanced vocabulary than either, he says, but with its many consonants and variable vowels, “is not so pretty to hear.”
In addition to the wild success of “Gangnam Style, ” there are other signs pointing to a more multilingual pop horizon. It helps that the Anglophone tastes of mainstream radio stations have less and less influence. “Gangnam Style” broke internationally thanks to its viral video. It was also a goofy YouTube clip that introduced Americans to Moldovan pop a few years ago, specifically "Dragostea Din Tei, " better known here as “The Numa Numa Song.” Earlier, this year, a Mad Men episode had viewers Googling “Zooby Zooby Zoo” (actually “Zou Bisou Bisou, ”), when a scene featured Jessica Pare singing the 1962 French tune.
One apparent rule of having a foreign-language hit in the United States is that you probably won’t have another; you can have other hits, but they have to be in English. After “Der Kommissar, ” for instance, Falco had a huge hit with “Rock Me Amadeus.” Originally all-German, the international version featured English lyrics. To some degree, foreign hits are still something of a novelty, and unless you’re Weird Al Yankovic, making a career of novelty songs is a tough go. (Sadly, we’ll never what “La Bamba” singer Ritchie Valens might have accomplished had a plane crash not ended his eight-month career in 1959.)
Richard Alba, a City University of New York sociologist, surmises that the success of songs like Emilio Pericoli’s 1962 Italian-language “Al Di La” was the result of audiences still close to their immigrant roots. The Korean population in the United States increased 38 percent between 1990 and 2010 to a total of about 1.1 million. I don’t know how much this had to do with the success of “Gangnam Style” in the United States, but it could be an indication this isn’t the last we’ll hear from of Psy. Here’s hoping he’s still singing in Korean when we do.[page]
怎样去解释有650 000 000的电视观众收看“江南style”这一现象呢?Jaunty的舞蹈在一定程度上是当之无愧的，但韩国的喉音唱腔和辅音送气的唱法，是不是也是吸引大众的一个重要的因素?但是它并非如此，尽管或许它不像是伟大的作品那样。
“江南Style”是打破美国多年来的第一首外国语的歌曲。并且很有可能成为以后更多歌曲进驻美国的一大标志，但是这首歌确确实实不是第一首。早在上的世纪的50和60年代，当你打开收音机 的时候，你可以听到印度歌曲 (“Volare ” 1958)，德国歌曲 (“Sailor” 1960) 和 (“Pata Pata ” 1966)。自从拉丁语在上个世纪的90年代开始盛行时，并且使得像Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin这样的明星崛起，并且他们在偶然中用西班牙语唱歌那时开始，单语流行曲就已一去不复返了。鉴于在美国有50 000 000的西班牙裔人，这使得市场变得切实可行，一些西班牙语歌已在语言的交替中获得了巨大的成功。(90年代见证了真正拉丁语的怪诞流行曲的成功：那些吟唱的和尚和Enigma’s Sadeness 中的第一部分)。曾经法国和日本的歌曲在1963年得流行歌曲排行榜上位居首位，但如今在多语歌曲中已是今非昔比了。自从1987年Los Lobos版本的“La Bamba”开始，非英语歌曲再也没能进入热榜的100强。(很久以后，1966“Macarena”的粉丝将歌词翻唱成了英语。)
诸多的原因是我们很难为情， 英语听力习惯剥夺了我们自然节奏和其他语言旋律――语言鼻化元音的法国，肺泡颤音的葡萄牙语，辅音集群的捷。我们中的与多人都不能理解单词作为音乐器具， 不仅仅会使我们对语言的发音有更好的赏析还会使我们关注于人们的嗓音。在德语中你听到过清晰地喉音发音吗?因为他是清软颚塞音的变种，它增加了一个奇妙的 percussiveness“99 luftbalons”。说英语的人没有这个，这就是1984年 Nena的英语化版本失败得其中一个原因。
鉴于流行曲的历史，“江南 Style"的英语翻译指日可待。我不会说韩语，但是我能猜出它的些许松弛。而且我也没必要会说韩语。多亏了英文版本的"Der Kommissar" ，使我们知道这首歌是关于民间吸毒的故事，但我们失去了德国原来的那种不拘一格的旋律。还有，从法国的伊迪丝?皮特德国的詹斯，尽管观众不知道他们唱的什 么，但是完全不影响他们对观众的吸引力。当皮特传达出悲伤的情感时，你必须先知道法语，然后才会知道"Mon Dieu”是一个悲伤的故事吗?
语言对音乐的影响可以以出乎意料的形 式。2002年在认知科学期刊调查研究中发现：文化主导语言影响其音乐乐器的韵律结构。2006年“心理学的学习和动机”上出版一篇研究文章中，麦克吉尔 大学的研究人员提到：西班牙以固定节奏模式为特色，每一个音节都与节拍大致相吻合，而重音节拍语言如英语往往在重音音节上才有节拍。换句话说，每种语言都有自己的节奏，所以有些语言可能会有更好的某种韵律模式。
尽管韵律语言障碍，但是一些歌手仍然 可以从一种语言转换成另一种语言。夏奇拉毫不费力地来回使用西班牙语和英语着两种语言。还有披头士以早期的德语版本录音唱片而促进了其销售量。阿巴经常录制多个版本的歌曲如瑞典，英国，法国，德国。但是对于其他的艺术家这有可能是困难的。无论是拥有难以令人信服的口音或内在的语言和南加州之间的不协调的戴 维李罗斯，还是采用西班牙版本的戴夫“Eat ‘Em and Smile”， 都未能像他们所期待的那样打入拉美市场。
在任何情况下，国际图表都清晰显示英语服务于流行音乐的混合语。上周，只有2首德语歌进入了德国榜的前十名，而英语个却占了6首，其余的2首是乐器音乐和"江南Style"。在丹麦和法国的前十强的排行榜上就有7首是英文歌曲。[page]
即使在年度欧洲影视竞争中，只有少数 的欧洲歌曲才会入围到以英语歌为主导的竞场中。2011入围前十强的歌曲中有7首是完全的用英语唱的，其余的3首部分使用英语。今年最终入围的前十强一半 是英语。虽然俄罗斯也获得荣誉，是因为其提交了部分的俄罗斯的乌德穆尔特共和国的乌德穆尔特歌。毫无疑问，它肯定是流行音乐上最不多见的一种语言。
是不是一些语言比其他的语言更具音乐 性?这这完全是主观的看法，当然，但语言的语音学家道格说语言有很多元音有优势。道格说：“元音要比辅音更容易歌唱”。道格现在是方言的专家研究其主要的 因素。“那是因为整个声带道的打开都是在一个元音上。”而那些有阻碍气流而产生的爆破音，往往使歌手犯错，他说。翻译的京剧而受到赞扬的诗人，耶鲁大学教授J .麦克拉奇，也同意元音很重要，至少是在歌剧上。
他说，"印度的词汇量相当的小，但因为美妙的元音，使其语言听起来来更加的美好"。还有法语，因为它那均匀的重音节而具有一种音乐的感觉。尽管英语在词汇方面比这两者都要丰富，但是英语有许多的辅音和多变的元音，因而英语听起来不是很美妙。
除了广泛流行的“江南Style”， 有更多的暗示流行音乐要多种语言。它使得那些以英语为母语的人体会到主流广播电台的影响力越来越小。多亏了病毒视频，江南得以突破国际。同样的，几年前，也是愚笨的人把歌曲引进到了美国并流行于摩尔多瓦。特别是"Dragostea Din Tei "以“The Numa Numa Song.”而远近闻名。今年早期，当其中的一个为1962年得杰西卡演唱会精选场景时，一个疯子的片段竟给观众带来了惊讶。
外国语言冲击美国的一个明显的规则就 是你不能有其他语言，你要让转换语言，并且他们必须是英语。例如，在 “Der Kommissar“之后，法尔科已 “Rock Me Amadeus.” 而盛名噪起。最初所有的德国人，国际精选版本是英语歌词。某种程度上，国外冲击还是比较新奇的，除非，你是Weird Al Yankovic 不然的话，打造出以新奇歌曲的职业生涯会十分的艰难。(遗憾的是，我们没有什么“拉巴”歌手。如果在1959年里奇瓦伦斯的飞机没有坠毁，就不会结束他8 可能月的音乐生涯，或许现在他早已成功。)
Richard Alba 纽约城市大学的社会学家总结说， 1962年像Emilio Pericoli的印度歌曲“Al Di La”的成功是由于观众仍然根植于他们的移民文化之中。从1990到2010这段时间，在美国的韩国人已增了38%，总数达到了1 100，000.我不知道这与“江南Style”在美国流行有多大的关系，但是它至少可以表明他不是我们听到的最后一首好歌。真诚希望但我们在听时，在韩 国，他仍然在歌唱着。
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