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Nonsense Syllable in Songs?

de NJ Esperantist, 30 de marzo de 2016

Aportes: 16

Idioma: English

NJ Esperantist (Mostrar perfil) 30 de marzo de 2016 01:45:58

Is there a standard or often used 'nonsense syllable' in Esperanto songs? In English there are some songs that repeat a nonsense syllable such as 'la' or 'do' to finish a line in a song. Specifically I'm thinking about the campfire song 'Baby Shark' which my daughter introduced to us a few years ago after a Girl Scout retreat.

erinja (Mostrar perfil) 30 de marzo de 2016 11:23:18

No standard syllable but I think English might be less standard than you think, itself. Plenty of songs use all different nonsense syllables other than the ones you mention, if you think about it.

Alkanadi (Mostrar perfil) 30 de marzo de 2016 13:30:07

NJ Esperantist (Mostrar perfil) 30 de marzo de 2016 14:11:49

I think I'll choose a syllable that is not already a word in Esperanto already then. This is for a fun video I'm doing about making a push stick for a table saw. The process is so rudimentary that I don't feel it needs a descriptive step by step, so I'm setting it to a parody of the aforementioned Shark song. The Shark song uses 'do do do' (pronounced 'du du du' in Esperanto orthography) as the nonsense syllable. Since 'du' has a meaning already, I'll go with 'tu' which is similar enough.

NJ Esperantist (Mostrar perfil) 30 de marzo de 2016 14:12:58

Alkanadi:You mean like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOv8nG2mAWk
Sort of.

erinja (Mostrar perfil) 30 de marzo de 2016 14:55:54

I think "du du du" is fine, no one would ever mistake it for "two" in the context.

I've heard of plenty songs using "nai nai nai" as the nonsense syllable, without worrying that it sounds just like the word "nigh", or "dum dum dum" without worrying that it conflates with "dumb" ridulo.gif

NJ Esperantist (Mostrar perfil) 30 de marzo de 2016 15:39:49

Cool. Less mind bending for me while singing.

Pathu5 (Mostrar perfil) 30 de marzo de 2016 16:04:06

erinja:I think "du du du" is fine, no one would ever mistake it for "two" in the context.

I've heard of plenty songs using "nai nai nai" as the nonsense syllable, without worrying that it sounds just like the word "nigh", or "dum dum dum" without worrying that it conflates with "dumb" ridulo.gif
I would add a famous example of this: The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel. Though the syllable is "lai lai lai," Nobody confuses it for the word "lie."

Likewise, Do Re Mi from Sound of Music points out the similar sounds of nonsense/musical syllables and real words as a memory tactic.

NJ Esperantist (Mostrar perfil) 11 de abril de 2016 17:13:35

In case any one is curious, here's what I did with the answer to the question I originally posted. Warning: It was never intended as great art, more of a joke. [ link to YouTube video]

Christa627 (Mostrar perfil) 22 de abril de 2016 05:38:36

erinja:I think "du du du" is fine, no one would ever mistake it for "two" in the context.

I've heard of plenty songs using "nai nai nai" as the nonsense syllable, without worrying that it sounds just like the word "nigh", or "dum dum dum" without worrying that it conflates with "dumb" ridulo.gif
Once I translated "Deck the Halls" into toki pona, and someone objected to my using "la" as a nonsense syllable, since it's a tp syntactic word. But I'm like, no real person is going to try to parse "a la la la la" as anything grammatical! I don't think anyone else was worried about it, though.

Sorry I'm a bit off-topic; that's just what came to mind...

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