I'm amazed at how well he has the sounds down. I'd never peg him as Italian, and I probably wouldn't realize it was gibberish until the backup singers did it slowly; I'd think I was just failing to get it, like listening to Dylan on a bad day.
I'm amazed at the contrast with British actors trying to do American accents, which never fool me; is it easier to do it with gibberish, or is he just unusually good at mimicking American sounds?
I've had this funny song in my playlist for a long time. I used to listen to it when I didn't know any english and it's amazing how at the time I couldn't distinguish it from normal english, since often in songs it's hard to catch all the words (and in some cases you even have to find the lyrics to get them all right).
I must add that sounds in languages are a very strange thing. When my american friends who don't speak italian try to say something in fake-italian, sometimes the accent is so strange that I tend to assume they were speaking in english and I just didn't hear well. Then, only after they make it very explicit that they are trying to speak or sound italian, I change my mental setup and can guess what they are saying. Otherwise to me it sounds like something indecipherable. It is kind of accessing different areas of the brain based on which language I'm listening to. Which doesn't happen with actual americans or italians since in that case the accent itself is obvious and makes me switch immediately.
Now though I can really appreciate how close his accent is to the american accent.
But in general, I would say that this is a good occasion to look him up on youtube or any online (or not) music store, his music and his lyrics are great. He also made an album with Mina, who is recognized pretty much unanimously as the best italian female singer, ever.
Hah, yeah I totally get that :) The brain seems to have to know what language they're listening to before it can understand it. And it takes just slightly too long:)
I noticed this again when watching Iron Sky, a movie with both English and German text (I am Dutch, and can understand both--though English is easier for me). For some reason the cinema showed a version with German subtitles for the English parts instead of the other way around. It was very hard to understand, especially because some scenes were English with German accent or vice versa. I'd hear the start of a scene, and--subtitles or not--I needed a few seconds to determine the language before I could comprehend what they were saying. So I missed the first few seconds of many scenes, because at the same time there was a lot going on on the screen, making it very hard to keep up.
(I did watch the movie again with English subtitles, and caught much more of the jokes--such as a Brazilian resembling the Führer's moustache. Great movie)
As a young man, Richard Feynman was fascinated by the sounds of Italian, and faked Italian sounding gibberish, even to the point of "performing" it in front of his sister's Girl Scout troop.
Even McNulty on The Wire? When I saw him later on some talk show and he was speaking and holding himself as a posh Brit (ie himself) it almost broke my brain. So, yeah, he fooled me.
There was a great YouTube video here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-cAnFbEXY0) - but it seems to have been removed by the user. Not sure if there's any way to find it now. It was Americans speaking gibberish, and it sounded pretty convincingly like language.
Indeed. Folks seem unbelievably harsh on accents they know not to be the native one, which is every time a famous actor does an accent, but all those no-names doing even not very good ones fly straight under their radar, making me highly skeptical it's not just confirmation bias.
Christian Bale often keeps his American accents for interviews and press. There might be something in that...
I've read several places[1] that the producers and/or director of the show didn't realize that Richard Coyle (Jeff Murdoch on Coupling) wasn't Welsh until the second season of that show.
Great example, and I believe complementary to my observation. If talk show interviews are to be believed then when Hugh Laurie began on House he wasn't famous in America, and most people didn't have any idea he was British. The show was a hit, everyone loved him, and then it's far too late for anyone to erroneously pick apart his flawless accent.
It's almost impossible to imagine, but if Hugh Laurie had been popular in America, and his natural voice widely known, then the reception to that series could have been very different, purely from unfounded criticism of the accent. And if this is starting to sound a little far-fetched, let's not forget it all began with someone saying "British actors trying to do American accents, which never fool me".
Well... I knew he was British, as did some of the people I know that watched the show, and it really didn't have any impact on how we watched it (at least, nothing we noticed ourselves noticing).
When I've been aware of it, it's never been convincing — but of course you're right; if I'm unaware of it and it did fool me, I wouldn't know. Let's amend the above to "which usually don't fool me."
A similar effect happens with CGI. Most (tech savvy) people think that they can smell CGI from a mile away, but the vast majority of CGI these days is subtle and mundane (put another helicopter in the background there; we didn't have budget to rent two), and slips right by unnoticed. It's when the CGI is something obviously impossible and also the focus of a scene that viewers actually notice.
> Most (tech savvy) people think that they can smell CGI from a mile away
This is dependent on how much physics is going on in the scene, and how good the person's intuitive sense of physics is. I think a lot of that's been damaged by seeing bad CGI in films. One disturbing thing I've noticed is that before widespread CGI, animator's sense of physics seemed to be getting better as animation technique developed. Now, it seems to be getting worse.
But besides the various problems, the physics of the bird is just flat-out wrong. When birds of prey snatch something off the ground, they are relying on having enough momentum, such that after the snatch, they still have forward motion to maintain airspeed. The portrayed bird in the video doesn't have any forward motion just after the snatch. No forward motion means no lift. There's nothing holding it up. The flapping wings are horizontally oriented and flapping vertically, so they're primarily thrusting forwards. (Birds with little to no forward motion can flap their wings to thrust away from the ground, but then their wings are oriented vertically, and the flapping is horizontal.) I can only assume the animators think "levitation rays" come off the bottom of the wings.
That's egregious, but it's what passes for "good" CG nowadays. Then you have the totally execrable stuff in Hollywood blockbusters. (Star Wars ep. 1-3)
Grossly exaggerated physics in movies are nothing new though. Before CGI, explosions were still silly puffy balls of fire, and people still survived them by jumping away from them in slow motion.
And before CGI, hoaxes were still terrible, yet people bought into them. I mean, look at the Cottingley Fairies from the early 20th century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies. The bar for fooling laymen just isn't that high, and never has been.
As for Hollywood blockbusters, it really varies a lot from movie to movie. Also, the Star Wars prequels are nearly 8-14 years old, so they're not the greatest examples of modern CGI.
He is one of the greatest italian artists who ever lived, and in his early years he was also an avid listener to american rock'n'roll classics. The video is from at least 30 years ago. Maybe 40.
He definitely is incredibly good. Did you ever try to fluently speak gibberish? It's pretty hard to come up with something without repeating yourself, not to mention something resembling an existing language.
I'm amazed at the contrast with British actors trying to do American accents, which never fool me; is it easier to do it with gibberish, or is he just unusually good at mimicking American sounds?