Bollywood meets Monty Python

[Xavier_Onassis]

Complete with strange subtitles, and a cast of hundreds.

Difficult to believe, impossible to explain. But entertaining.

http://www.omgvids.com/indian.php

[kimba1]

lol
just saw bride and prejudice
I`m slowing coming over to the bollywood side
just love all that dancing and singing
too bad most them are 3 hours long
as a america i just can`t handle that

[Xavier_Onassis]

What Bollywood does, they do well, especially those song and dance routines, with seventeen wardrobe changes in ten minutes. Still, ten minutes of this is about all I can handle without getting annoyed. The same is true of violent fights, kung fu, and musicals. If I see another bit with the ticking bomb, and the decreasing numbers, I know I will surely hurl. And those old American musicals, where they sing for no reason at the drop of a hat get really tedious with me. This one was good because the subtitles were  outrageous. It really did sound like what they were singing. Hindi is an Indo-European language and has similar a similar sound structure, and none of the tonal difficulties that make Chinese songs hard to listen to for Westerners.

[kimba1]

ohh
I know what your talking aboout
it`s chinese opera
my dad left china because that
the communist are nothing compared to those screeching sound.
rappers can`t compare

[Lanya]

ohh
I know what your talking aboout
it`s chinese opera
my dad left china because that
the communist are nothing compared to those screeching sound.
rappers can`t compare

LOL
Proof-positive that music CAN be torture!

[Cynthia]

Omygosh! That was funny!

[kimba1]

if youtube has chinese opera ya`ll in for some sounds you never want to hear
the drums crack me up though

[Xavier_Onassis]

Chinese opera no doubt has its fans among the Chinese. But it is though it had been invented as a parody of Klingon opera. It is far, far worse.

The Chinese language has only words of one syllable, and the meaning of a specific word depends not only on the consonants and the vowels, but also the tone. Standard Mandarin has four tones. It is hard, if not impossible to understand Chinese opera as it is sung, because the song distorts the tones, so when it is broadcast, they have a written version scrolling down the screen so the audience can guess what they are saying. The costumes and the makeup are highly stylized, to the point that the actors look barely human.

But it is the sound that is actually painful to the Western ear.

I find Italian opera, particularly the warbling women parts, very hard on my eardrums. I can take no more than ten minutes of the proverbial 'fat lady singing'. But Chinese opera I find will drive me out of the room in under one minute. Only the worsat of rapsters can do this, and rap is deliberately designed for guys like me to loathe.

Despite that, I am sure that Italian opera and Chinese opera require a lot more talent than rap. I think I would need a lot of experience to ever enjoy either.

[Cynthia]

Despite that, I am sure that Italian opera and Chinese opera require a lot more talent than rap. I think I would need a lot of experience to ever enjoy either.

They say that one either hates Opera or loves it....first time in ear shot. Chinese Opera has an audience out there somewhere.

Xavier, it sounds as if you have some linguistics in your background. Intereting points. I took a Linguistics course last year. Tough stuff. ..in parts.....but hell of a lot of fun in others.

[kimba1]

I listen to italian opera, puccini mostly
particularly callas
this is the  bad habits I pick up working in a museum.
I even like bree and quiche.
pretty bad

[Xavier_Onassis]

Xavier, it sounds as if you have some linguistics in your background. Intereting points. I took a Linguistics course last year. Tough stuff. ..in parts.....but hell of a lot of fun in others.

======================================
I have a Ph. D. in Spanish Lang & Lit. I have studied French, German, Latin and Japanese as well as linguistics.

I like brie and quiche, and some opera, just not the bits with warbling female vocalists.

[Cynthia]

"I have a Ph. D. in Spanish Lang & Lit. I have studied French, German, Latin and Japanese as well as linguistics.

Ahh, from Beowulf to the Gates of debate, may your words live on.

[kimba1]

japanese?
do you know kenji
my spelling is off
I`m wondering is it phonetic?
how does it relate convert to japanese

[kimba1]

no fair
I`m finally at youtube
and all the chinese opera is good
this is as close to the stuff I grew up with

and it still good
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpHSkxFfgR4

really chinese opera normally isn`t this good
they really cleaned it up at youtube

[Xavier_Onassis]

japanese?
do you know kenji
my spelling is off
I`m wondering is it phonetic?
how does it relate convert to japanese

The Japanese learn four alphabets in school: kanji, hirigana, katakana, and romaji.

Kanji was adapted from Chinese, it is a set of pictographs that you can probably read if you read Chinese, especially the oldstyle Classical Chinese used in Taiwan.
The katakana and the hiragana are what are called syllabaries. The katakana is used for foreign words, the hiragana is a sort of supplement to the Kanji characters, used to add particles and such. Spoken Japanese has a lot of words that are derived from Chinese, but the language itself is totally different from Chinese with regard to how words are formed. Romaji is an adaptation of the Roman alphabet to Japanese sounds.

A syllabary is where a symbol is used for an entire syllable rather than a vowel or a consonant. Ba, be, bi, bo, bu: like that.
 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_alphabet

You can find the hiragana and the katakana on the Internet, and I imagine the kanji as well, but you would probably need to have the Chinese character set on your computer, which I don't.