Usually its like just a few words sprinkled in, or at most like one or two lines…

Literally I feel like they’re just trying to say: “Hey this is a foreign language I’m sooo cooool!”

  • Dr. Saxon Crawfish@lemmy.today
    0·
    3 days ago

    Languages do borrow words from other languages, but this is not the phenomenon we see that OP is referencing. They are not talking about Japanese words borrowed from English. They mean entire choruses or strings of lyrics which are just put forth rendered in English (think “Let’s Fighting Love.” etc. Myriad examples of JPOP in particular doing this can be found in seconds.) Yes, I know you can point out a number of American songs which do this. You’re very smart, but if you actually look at the numbers, non-anglosphere artists do this much more with English than the other way round.

    In addition, the borrowing of words or the use of phrases from other languages by speakers of said languages does not change the place of a language in the family tree of languages. Japanese is not related to Chinese, despite more than 40% of its vocabulary being borrowed from Chinese.

    English is firmly a Germanic language when examined from any real linguistic standpoint and not just what some idiot said on Tumblr 15 years ago when they realized English has some borrowed French vocabulary (which… spoiler alert: so do all of the other Germanic languages). I also find it interesting that the same pseudo-intellectuals who insist this would never insist that French, Italian or Spanish were not truly Romance languages, despite the massive borrowings into these languages of Germanic vocabulary through Gothic and Frankish which occurred in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages.

    Look at the most basic and familiar registers of a language as far as vocabulary goes, look at grammar and syntax, phonology, etc. when classifying a language. The existence of borrowed vocbulary doesn’t change this any more than wearing a kimono or drinking green tea would make me “part Japanese.”

    To answer the question: it is used as a virtue signal because English is the prestige languge of global capitalism right now. This is the same reason why self-hating anglophones think of it what they do: global capitalism treats it as a default setting (at least the most sterile, corporate-approved registers of the language, anyway.) Instead of a rich linguistic heritage, they see it the same way a fish sees water or we see the air.

  • over_clox@lemmy.world
    0·
    9 days ago

    This is more of a question than a thought, but apparently the English language borrows from lots of Latin-ish and other alphabetic languages of centuries past.

    Yes English is awkward. I didn’t write the rules or definitions either. 🤷

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
      0·
      9 days ago

      Just think.

      Right now at your local hardware store are tons of tools you can buy. If you need to cut something, you can buy a saw.

      And when you use the saw, the word “saw” is the verb of how you use the noun. So you’d use a saw to saw.

      And if you had an instinct to cut a saw in half, you might use a second saw to cut the first saw in half.

      But you wouldn’t do that. YOU have no desire to do that. But maybe someone else does. And maybe you just happened to bear witness to the cutting of the saw. You will have seen it. And since thats now in past tense, you saw it happen.

      In which case you will have saw a saw saw a saw.

      • over_clox@lemmy.world
        0·
        9 days ago

        I’m probably gonna fuck this up, it’s something of an old ‘meme’, before I was even born in 1982. Anyways, an old riddle I once heard, from a book written before I was born…

        Riddle…

        • You’re stuck in a room, no windows and no doors.
        • All you have is a table and a mirror, how you get out?

        Answer…

        • You look in the mirror and see what you saw.
        • You use the saw to cut the table in half.
        • Two halves make a whole.
        • You climb through the hole and you’re out!

        Yeah, works better verbally LMFAO!

        • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
          0·
          9 days ago

          If I, as a child in the 80s had said that to my mom, she would have said “Quit being asinine. That would never work.”

          Yeah. I suppose it wouldn’t…

          And that boys and girls, is how you give a child depression, and a reason to question if talking at all is even worth it.

          Hint: No. It’s not.

      • Pirky@piefed.worldEnglish
        0·
        9 days ago

        I once saw a man in Arkansas, who had a saw which could out saw any saw that it saw saw; the man said, “Have you saw a saw that could out saw the saw you saw in Arkansas? If you have saw a saw that could out saw the saw you saw in Arkansas, show me the saw saw.”; when he said that I saw a saw, I said, “Yes I did saw a saw in Arkansas, and what a saw I saw, that saw saw!!”

        • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
          0·
          9 days ago

          I was going to say that you’re more like The Brain. Then as I increased the font size, I realized your name is Pirky. Not Pinky. So now my reference makes no sense.

  • 9point6@lemmy.world
    0·
    9 days ago

    It’s not unheard of there to be English language tracks that drop in random French, Italian or Spanish words and phrases

    It’s just regular cultural exposure to other languages ultimately. No rule says you need to stick to one language in a song, so some musicians throw in some stuff from other languages they’ve heard, because why not

  • faintwhenfree@lemmus.orgEnglish
    0·
    9 days ago

    Watch firefly, they have a lot chinese words mixed in with English. I don’t speak Chinese, so I don’t know if it’s real, but subtitles say [mandarin] so I assume they’re real words. But they flip flop quite beautifully.

  • AmidFuror@fedia.io
    0·
    9 days ago

    That feeling when you go to block someone, and you realize they’re an alt of someone you already blocked…

  • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    9 days ago

    Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto…
    Michelle, ma belle, Sont des mots qui vont très bien ensemble…
    Psycho Killer, Qu’est-ce que c’est?..
    Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?..
    Jeux sans frontières, Hans plays with Lotte, Lotte plays with Jane…
    Eyes without a face, Les yeux sans visage…
    This indecision’s buggin’ me (esta indecisión me molesta)…
    Ooh, appelle-moi, mon chéri, appelle-moi, Anytime, anyplace, anywhere, any way…
    and many more.

    • spongebue@lemmy.world
      0·
      9 days ago

      Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?..

      Side note, I have this illness (probably mental, but I’ve been told otherwise) where I’m a Dad. This causes me to sing ridiculous things for no reason. Every time I get some markdown croissants for breakfast the next morning and offer one to my wife, I ALWAYS start singing “Voulez-vous would you like a croissant, croissant?”

      Hopefully one day they will find a cure

      • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
        0·
        8 days ago

        im not a dad but I still have things like this go through my mind. every time I see dull mens club I think b52’s. we belong to the. dull mens. club. to the dull mens club. dull mens club. to the dull mens club. dull mens club.

    • 0ops@piefed.zipEnglish
      0·
      9 days ago

      Psycho Killer, Qu’est-ce que c’est?..

      You know, I never knew what he was saying there, but I didn’t ever consider that it wasn’t even English

  • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    9 days ago

    Just looking at the words in your title, “country”, “random”, and “imagine” were all borrowed from Old French.

  • lime!@feddit.nu
    0·
    9 days ago

    you know the saying that english is five languages in a trenchcoat that drags other languages into alleyways to ruffle through their pockets for loose nouns?

    english is basically the european pidgin language.

  • FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.websiteEnglish
    0·
    9 days ago

    English contains a veritable shitload of loanwords as well.

    But you’re not wrong when you think they’re trying to be cool. You’ll hear this most often in hiphop, which started in English and not every language lends itself to rap. So they throw in an f-bomb here or there. Imitation is the highest form of flattery type stuff.

    Also, English is the most commonly learned foreign language on this planet. A lot of contemporary music genres came out of North America. I would say internet culture is most pervasive in English as well. A lot of tech jargon becomes English loanwords in other languages. There are reasons beyond wanting to sound cool as well.

  • Fuckfuckmyfuckingass@lemmy.world
    0·
    9 days ago

    I was in Germany once many years ago, and was riding the train with a bunch of college kids. They only swore in English, everything else was German.