Why Do English Words Suddenly Appear?

OK, the title of the entry is a bit stupid since I couldn't find anything for the title and thought I'd use one of the line of this famous Carpenters song (mind you, every time I listen to this Carpenters song, the whole episode of Marge Simpson getting a door bell chiming of this song resurfaces in my memory; the funniest part, of course, is Señor Ding Dongwho comes to save the day...Ah, The Simpsons, can't live without them).

Right, this entry has nothing to do with The Simpsons but about Oozekitaku. I have been wanting to write on the phenomenon of non-anglophone artists using English in their songs. Everyone is used to it by now, except that it still sounds weird to me, especially with very badly pronounced English. Japanese rock-pop is without exception; but Oozekitaku does it differently. As a matter of fact, he rarely puts true English words in his songs and the only song I found (so far) with quite a bit of English is track number 3 of this 2004 single. It's called Lover Lover (the title of the song does not mean anything). It's not because I like this guy's music so I am saying what I am saying; but when he sings part of the song in English, it sounds alright, it sounds like he actually speaks English (actually, I think he does...I read it somewhere on his web site that he does because he'd been to Britain before or something...but with my still selective Japanese, I am not entirely sure...). Anywho, I have to give him a round of applause for how he sings. He rolls his Rrrrs and enounciates all the words perfectly. That's rare for Japanese songsters/songtresses.

However, his voice becomes lower and less nasal when he sings the lyrics in English. That's another thing I was wondering about. I did write about it after his gig (apparently at live shows in Japan, they always give the attendees a feeback form to fill in afterwards). I wrote that he should sing more in English since his voice sounds really quite good (different, but as beautiful...but without this tenderness that I sense when it's sung in Japanese). I really wonder how he would sound like when he performs a number entirely in English. Let's hope Oozekitaku get an English song out soon...That way, there won't be any more English words suddenly appearing in places I least expect.

Interesting stuff.

This is getting a bit linguistic and honestly, this was something that I wanted to study at university. I wanted to do a research on one's voice pitch when one speaks in different languages. I know that I sound a lot higher when I am speaking in French, followed by English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese. Well, my friend Dominique (who is French) told me this a few years ago. When she called me at home one day, she got the voice mail outgoing message that I had previously recorded in French, English and Chinese (yes, I was bored. I actually wanted to say "Appuyer 1 pour le français, Press 2 for English..."). She left a message but in the message, she said that she didn't know I had another roommate that spoke Chinese (she seriously didn't know that I was from Taiwan and that I spoke Chinese before this). I called her back and she was surprised to learn that all three voices were me, Jacob. That was the moment I realised the various levels of pitch exist in different languages, provided that one speaks the language more or less fluently and without too much an accent.

Mmm, as for Japanese, since I don't exactly speak fluent Japanese, I can't know where my voice pitch goes when Japanese phrases come out of my mouth. I think it's for sure higher than English. But higher than French? I don't know...Maybe this could be my research thesis for Ph.D...hey, why not?