If I wish to do an impression of a Chinese chap, I will not allow myself to be hampered by the fact that I don't speak a word of Mandarin. I will speak in cod Chinese. Something along the lines of Ah so chu li tah san ho kui.For Swedish I would say Der flurgen hondsbarp en lursten empart.
For Italian I would use Di questo fina alimento paratorre.
Utterly meaningless, but sounds to my ears like the language in question. So, what does cod English sound like to an Italian?
Luckily, there was an Italian singer in the 1970s who wrote a song entirely in cod English. There is no meaning, and very few actual words scattered in. But it sounds, even to my ears, very like English.
Here it is, as a curio.
Exceedingly clever, but worrying - is this where English Language is doomed to follow?
ReplyDeleteThis is incredible. Not only the concept but he dance routine as well ;)
ReplyDeleteI keep catching almost-words in there. Will we get some background on the term itself later?
I've heard of pidgin languages before, but not cod ones. Now I'm wondering, is there a difference between pidgin and cod English (Chinese, Swedish, Italian, etc.)?
ReplyDeleteThis person has engaged in an experiment very much like yours, and I think he did pretty well.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C5EZmyJ9ik
I always thought the Goons were using cod Chinese in the 'Ying Tong Song' until I came to China. And met a real Mr. Song Ying Tong.
ReplyDeleteHad to smother a very large grin when I read his namecard.
This is vintage Adriano Celentano, who is still going strong on Italian TV 40 years on.
ReplyDeleteYes he does, but his rantings in Italian, Celentano own language, should make sense...
ReplyDeleteGerofono
Keep on coming back to this one. A great find.
ReplyDeleteThis one went straight to my ipod. Brilliant! Thanks for alerting us to it.
ReplyDeleteAdriano Celentano!
ReplyDeleteJohn Cleese (Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, etc.) does some great cod-language routines. (For example, when he "speaks Russian" in "A Fish Called Wanda".)
ReplyDeleteBy the way, regarding your cod Chinese above, "ah so" is Japanese, not Chinese. In English it means, strangely enough, "ah, so". (In reality, it would be "ah so desu ka" ("oh, is that so?".) The word "so" (pronounced with a long, drawn-out "oh") means, coincidentally, almost the same thing as in English.
This reminds me of the wonderful song 'Y est-ce deux dés'. It is the result a heroic and stunningly succesful effort to capture the exact phonology of 'Yesterday' by the Beatles in grammatical (if rather cryptic) French lyrics.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x71PRL3IxYs
Here are notes on the text (down in the comments): http://www.kouya.net/?p=669
And here's 'Samovar, ouvert, sereine, beau' http://www.kouya.net/?p=679
Daan Hoek,
ReplyDeleteIt's killing me that I can't figure out "Samovar, overt, sereine, beau." Can you/anyone clue me in? Thank you!
@Unknown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POuOLvByxHE
Delete@Unknown: 'somewhere over the rainbow'. You just have to say it out loud.
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ReplyDeleteI enlivened a dull afternoon in my College library, many moons since, persuading two Modern Languages Undergrads that the astonishingly sustained work of spoofery 'Mots d'heures, gousses. rames' was an authentic work of scholarship. I wonder if it's still in print?
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