Thread: English and the EUROVISION song festival.

It’s strangely believed that people are interested in knowing what songs are about and so, as the English speaking auditorium is the most numerous, the chances of winning its sympathy is far more greater for the English singing contestants.
I am one of those semiliterate half English speaking target consumers who, according to the logic, should be happy to hear the songs sung in English. But am I and do I want to know what the songs are about? I don’t think so. What I want is for the song to sound natural, for the lyrics to rhyme and in order to make that possible the singer must sing in his mother tongue unless his English is as good as or close to that of a native English speaker.
Am I alone here? What do the real English speakers think about their language being mercilessly bruised and abused by the singers of any kind? Do they like it?

+1
I never try to follow the lyrics in English pop-music.

In Russian if lyrics contains something more or less valuable, worth attention (or even pretends to contain) we don't call this "pop". We call this "rock" or "rockopops" even if it sounds identical to pop. Such songs are automatically non-format for Eurovision.

If you can't speak the language you can't sing in it. Ever hear Pavarotti sing in English? Not good. The thread about Peter Nalitch - it's obvious he speaks very little English because he mumbles or pronounces very poorly almost all of the lyrics. And even if you can speak the language, your ability to express emotion in singing is limited by how comfortable you are with the language.

Totally agree - the participants should sing in their native language or the national language of their country. Let the local TV stations subtitle it or put a translation on the side of the screen during the singing.

Much nicer than broken English.. This is a EUROPEAN competition, so why should people sing in the language of the United Kingdom/United States?! Why don't they want to represent THEIR country in their own language? Where is their national pride?

Many of the participants have very strong accents in English and it really doesn't sound that great... Alexander Rybak for example has a pretty strong accent and he must have had at least 9 years of school English.

Plus the idea that "everyone understands English" and could therefore understand the lyrics is nonsense. Tell that to the Romanians, Greek, Portuguese or Belarussians! As far as they are concerned some other European langauge is probably a lot more convenient than English.
The average European might understand the title and a few phrases here and there - definitely not the entire song.

I don't support singing in English in this competition, I think it's tasteless for everyone other than Brits or Irish.

I think it is a difficult question to answer. I have imagined a situation:
I heard two songs. One of them is in Russian another one is in English. I like both a lot. And both are equal for my taste. But I have to choose only one song. What would I choose?
I would choose Russian song because I understand its lyric.
I asked some Russian people about their choice. They answered the same.
After that I really don't know whether it is good to sing in English instead of native language at the international contest or not.

Exactly - well it's not like that nationality of the contestants in EUROVISION is a big secret...

The whole point is that they are French, German, Russian, Italian etc...

So I think they should sing in their own language and there ought to be subtitles or karaoke style texting so that people who don't know the language can understand what the song is about.

On the English version of Eurovision they are ALWAYS making fun of the accents of the non-native speakers. I think it's very arrogant. The English consider the whole competition to be a joke because of this (and the fact that it is a bit un-chic...) It really annoys me - they treat it as a comedy show and not a serious competition. They should drop out if they think they are too cool to take it seriously. The other thing that the English commentator always complains about is the "political voting" whereby countries often vote for their neighbours etc, etc.

Originally Posted by Johanna

The other thing that the English commentator always complains about is the "political voting" whereby countries often vote for their neighbours etc, etc.

May be they aren't that wrong. Of course voting for only political reasons is just stupid. But if someone don't quite sure about the choice these reasons could play a certain role in the decision. I never voted for any Eurovision singers and don't plan to but if we imagine a hypothetically situation when this could happen, I'd rather vote for a singer, say, from Ukraine or Belorussia or Serbia just for the reason of Slavic brotherhood. Or if I'd happen to choose between, say, U.K. and Sweden I'd rather choose a Swedish singer cause I don't like U.K. goverment but feel rather sympathetic for Swedish one.

Well I am a "Russophile" at the moment so I might vote for Russia, Belarus or Ukraine... Maybe Belarus actually because both Russia and Ukraine have already won I think.

I only voted twice, because I actually hardly ever watched Eurovision since they started the telephone voting. But I voted once for Norway and once for Denmark. Nothing political of course.

A few countries have never won the competition for 40 years, so I'd consider voting for one of those. Portugal for example.