More Of The Worst Use Of Foreign Languages In Songs

A while ago we found five songs that deserved to be in the hall of shame for their atrocious use of a foreign language. We picked five songs that we felt merited the title of "The Worst Use of Foreign Languages in Songs" and felt we'd wrapped things up nicely.

Since then, we have had the misfortune of hearing even more horrendous examples and have had to extend our list to include a few more that get a big F grade for their use of foreign languages.

Samson and Delilah by Anthony Van Dyck

Muse - I Belong To You (Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix)

More attempts from the British rock trio to climb inside their own behinds with this one. If the French subtitle didn't do it for you, mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix, taken from the opera Samson and Delilah, features an over-Anglicised pronunciation of "réponds". Clearly, the singer didn't study how the acute accent over the letter e, (é) should be pronounced in French. He should just keep his falsetto in English.

Styx - Mr. Roboto

Though only featuring one line of Japanese, Mr. Roboto uses it just enough to get really annoying. The words dōmo arigatō misutā Robotto, meaning "thank you very much Mr. Roboto", almost kill the Japanese language and managed to spawn horrendous catchphrases. Styx should study their hiragana, katagana and kanji writing systems before they attempt to speak more Japanese.

Lady Gaga - Bad Romance

Though je veux ton amour et je veux ta revanche is used only briefly in the song, it's just to make Lady Gaga a tiny bit more pretentious, if that was even possible. The outspoken and often controversial singer adds this to a long list of things she shouldn't ever have done. Meat dress, anyone? Also, her song "Alejandro" has a few bits of Spanish and code-switching, but we felt nothing says unnecessary pretentious and cringe-worthy language usage like the French language.

A nice champagne...
now all we need is salmon.

Franz Ferdinand - Darts of Pleasure

The Scottish indie band Franz Ferdinand get a special mention for their use of German in this song. The lyrics in question, which go "Ich heiße Superphantastisch! Ich trinke Schampus mit Lachsfisch! Ich heiße Su-per-phan-tas-tisch", roughly mean "My name is Super-Fantastic! I drink Champagne with salmon! My name is Super-Fantastic!". Need we say more? Despite their German (technically Austrian) band name, they score a big 0 for their ability in the language.

Even now the list isn't exhaustive. If you have any more examples, tell us about them in the comments below.

The Worst Use of Foreign Languages in Songs

Though the charts across the world tend to be dominated by songs in English, every so often an English-speaking artist decides that their mother tongue is not good enough for a hit. We've got a list of a few of the most horrendous abominations to foreign languages we can think of...

ABBA - Voulez-Vous

We find it difficult to fault ABBA when it comes to music. The '70s are long gone and, thankfully, so is the attire. Though Swedish, ABBA's mastery of the English language is well-documented throughout their discography. Their mastery of French, however, is not. Don't get us started on Chiquitita...

Probably a stone's throw from the real Lady Marmalade's home.
The French Quarter, New Orleans.

Labelle - Lady Marmalade

"Voulez-vous coucher avec moi (ce soir)?" is the "only" French expression most English speakers seem to know when they're trying to be funny. Not only is the phrase horrendously pronounced throughout the song, but it has also led to many others thinking it's an accurate representation of the French language.

The Beatles - Michelle

The world's most famous band are under fire for their French ability. They certainly did some other horrendous things, linguistically speaking. We're not going to mention the stuff they did entirely in German... 

Manic Street Preachers - La Tristesse Durera

"That's not how it's pronounced!"

No strangers to being pretentious, the Manics have made a career from political controversy and making sure everyone knows that they're smarter than them when it comes to politics. When it comes to screaming Vincent van Gogh's last words, lead singer James Dean Bradfield gets a 0 out of 10.

U2 - Vertigo

The UK and Ireland have the lowest levels of bilingualism in Europe, with the UK having a worse record when it comes to foreign languages, except in this case. If Bono's flying the flag for a multilingual Ireland he's failing miserably. "Uno, dos, tres, catorce" is a horrendous error that U2 fans will defend as being intentional. Nice try! Bono should have studied harder in Spanish class.

This list is by no means exhaustive, so if you have any more to add or disagree with us, tell us in the comments below.

We've added a few more examples of the worst use of foreign languages in songs.

Swearing: How Words Become Offensive

We all know of them. Some of us say them more than others and some of us are more offended than others. How do certain words, which are nothing more than a combination of letters and phonemes, get to a point where people find them repulsive, loathsome and downright unmentionable?

Initially, most curse words had religious origins. The concept of blasphemy exists in almost every religion and when it comes to disrespecting things, deities would top the list. It was such a big deal that in the UK it was punishable by death, at least until 1697.

A sign prohibiting swearing along
the boardwalk in Virginia Beach, Virginia. 

After blasphemy comes the issue of offence. Words that are considered offensive are usually those that debase someone or something. Although curse words account for less than 1% of the English vocabulary, their use and existence is of particular interest to researchers.

The reaction to curses is largely based on the individual. Some believe that they should never be uttered, while others think they are acceptable under certain circumstances. There are also those that believe that they're nothing more than phonemes and that selecting some combinations as offensive and others as inoffensive is completely ridiculous.

We believe that context plays a huge part in how offensive words are. We rarely take offense to casual swearing in cinema, music or television and as a representation of particular cultures and natural speech. We appreciate that some may take offence to words and where possible, we attempt to avoid them, unless we feel their use is appropriate or improves the sentence.

Frequently cursing can make a speaker appear to have a lower intellect and can reflect badly on them. A large vocabulary is often associated with intelligence, so if you don't want to look a fool, try using words other than the F-word, the S-word and the ever-dreaded C-word. There are even books full of alternatives if you're short on ideas.

There are a vast number of words in the English language, so why you'd need to insert profanity every other word is beyond us. Certain circumstances, such as standing on a plug with no shoes on, definitely warrant the use of whichever word you feel is appropriate. Just try not to say it in front of children since they repeat everything!

Film Club: Les Choristes

Following a suggestion from one of our Twitter followers we watched Les Choristes (The Chorus for you monolinguals out there!) and, needless to say, loved it.

There's a reason we're fond of French cinema. We rarely watch a French film that doesn't have an exceptional retelling of human trials and tribulations. On top of that, it's in French. We think (as native English speakers) that the French language sounds significantly nicer than English. Phonetically it's a more pleasing language and what a film to show it off!

"Difficult" boys deserve nothing but coal.

Without throwing out any real spoilers, the film centres around a school for "difficult" boys. "Difficult" meaning generally naughty. The protagonist is their teacher who eventually arranges to form a choral group with the students in his class.

Phonaesthetically speaking, the language works well with singing and the film passes through the classic no-frills approach of storytelling often found in most of our favourite French films. It mixes the good with the bad and comes out with a nice emotional range and a good pace that makes it very easy to watch.

We'd advise anyone who speaks French to definitely watch it. Given the subject matter, it's very universal so we reckon it'd be a good shout even with subtitles for those who don't speak French. Hopefully there are no dubbed versions out there because as we previously mentioned in our dubbing or subtitling post, subtitles are the way to go, especially in a film with audio as important as this one.

Have you seen Les Choristes? What did you think of it? Tell us below in the comments.