Phonetical singing is singing by learning and performing the lyrics of a song by the words' phonetic sounds, without necessarily understanding the content of the lyrics, for example an artist who performs in Spanish even though they may not be proficient in the language.
For the DreamWorks animated film The Prince of Egypt , Israeli singer Ofra Haza sang most of the 17 versions of the song "Deliver Us" phonetically.
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The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation of speech sounds in written form. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign language students and teachers, linguists, speech–language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators and translators.
"This Land Is Your Land" is one of the United States' most famous folk songs. Its lyrics were written by American folk singer Woody Guthrie in 1940, based on an existing melody, a Carter Family tune called "When the World's on Fire", in critical response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America". When Guthrie was tired of hearing Kate Smith sing "God Bless America" on the radio in the late 1930s, he sarcastically called his song "God Blessed America for Me" before renaming it "This Land Is Your Land".
In the broadest sense of the word, a vocable is any meaningful sound uttered by people, such as a word or term, that is fixed by their language and culture. However, use in the broad sense is archaic. The term is currently used for utterances which are not considered words, such as the English vocables of assent and denial, uh-huh and uh-uh, or the vocable of error, uh-oh.
Eng or engma is a letter of the Latin alphabet, used to represent a velar nasal in the written form of some languages and in the International Phonetic Alphabet.
In phonetics, an r-colored or rhotic vowel is a vowel that is modified in a way that results in a lowering in frequency of the third formant. R-colored vowels can be articulated in various ways: the tip or blade of the tongue may be turned up during at least part of the articulation of the vowel or the back of the tongue may be bunched. In addition, the vocal tract may often be constricted in the region of the epiglottis.
"Day-O " is a traditional Jamaican folk song. The song has mento influences, but it is commonly classified as an example of the better known calypso music.
"Mele Kalikimaka" is a Hawaiian-themed Christmas song written in 1949 by R. Alex Anderson. The song takes its title from the Hawaiian phrase Mele Kalikimaka, meaning "Merry Christmas". One of the earliest recordings of this song was by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters in 1950 on Decca. It has been covered by many artists and used in several films
"Rendez-vous" was the Belgian entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 1983, performed in Dutch despite the French title by Pas de Deux.
"Avanti la vie" was the Belgian entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 1984, performed in French by Jacques Zegers.
"Soldiers of Love" was the Belgian entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 1987, performed in Dutch despite the English title by Liliane Saint-Pierre.
"Hé hé M'sieurs dames" was the French entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 1980, performed in French by the five-piece group Profil.
"Les mots d'amour n'ont pas de dimanche" was the French entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 1987, performed in French by Christine Minier.
In vocal music, contrafactum is "the substitution of one text for another without substantial change to the music".
"Words for Love" was the Israeli entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 2003, performed in Hebrew and English by Lior Narkis.
Phonetic reversal is the process of reversing the phonemes or phones of a word or phrase. When the reversal is identical to the original, the word or phrase is called a phonetic palindrome. Phonetic reversal is not entirely identical to backmasking, which is specifically the reversal of recorded sound. This is because pronunciation in speech causes a reversed diphthong to sound different in either direction, or differently articulate a consonant depending on where it lies in a word, hence creating an imperfect reversal.
"Sámiid ædnan " was the Norwegian entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 1980, performed by Sverre Kjelsberg and Mattis Hætta. The song is sometimes mistaken for being in the Sami language. The words of the song were performed in Norwegian by Sverre Kjelsberg, while Mattis Hætta contributed with the yoik chorus - a Sami form of vocal music without words; the title of the song is however in the Northern Sami language, translating as "Sami Earth" or "Sami Soil". There are no actual Sami words in the joik chorus- instead, the syllables "lo" and "la" are simply repeated, giving rise to another popular title for the song, "Låla".
Non-lexical vocables, which may be mixed with meaningful text, are a form of nonsense syllable used in a wide variety of music. Common English examples would be "la la la", "na na na" or "da da da".
"Dona Dona" popularly known as "Donna, Donna" is a song about a calf being led to slaughter written by Sholom Secunda and Aaron Zeitlin. Originally a Yiddish language song "Dana Dana", also known as "Dos Kelbl" it was a song used in a Yiddish play produced by Zeitlin.
Sean-nós is a highly ornamented style of unaccompanied traditional Irish singing, and in the singing of Ireland's Gaeltacht.
Sognamål is a Western Norwegian dialect which is spoken in the area of Sogn. One of the most prominent features of Sognamål is the pronunciation instead of in many words, i.e. exactly how the letter "á" is pronounced in modern Icelandic. The folk/black metal band Windir from Sogndal used the Sognamål dialect in their lyrics.