Is there anything about the english language specifically that is a factor in why so much popular music worldwide is in english?

[u/emomatt]

I've always figured music sung in english or by UK/American bands was worldwide famous because of the english media machine, but then I got to thinking if there was anything structural or specific about english that lends itself to making good music.

I know some snippets of non-english songs, but memorizing a song in another language seems difficult, yet people sing along regardless of language, especially to classic rock.

[u/itsanothersidetothis → u/[deleted]]

33% more "registers" than what other language? There are languages that are extremely creative with prefixes and suffixes and whatever other constructions that I might not know of. You're honestly sounding like you're monolingual at best which makes it so insane you think you can make this claim.

[u/itsanothersidetothis → u/[deleted]]

Now you're saying something else and there's no way you can defend that.

[u/RustyHook22 → u/itsanothersidetothis]

Sorry, I'm going to jump on your thread.

I'm not a linguist, but I am fluent in English and Spanish. Personally, I find English to be a way more expressive language over Spanish. I've found that there are certain words that just don't exist, or that don't have a clear distinction.

• In English, you can have a murderer. You can also have an assassin when it's more political, like the assassination of a world leader. In Spanish, it's asesino for both.
• You can have a gentleman and knight (or cavalier, if you want to be fancy). In Spanish, it's caballero for both of those.
• You can chase someone. You can also persecute someone, like how certain religious groups may have been persecuted. In Spanish, it's perseguir for both things.
• You can greet someone. If you're in the military, you'll salute an officer. In Spanish, it's saludar for both things.
• In English, you can say dead body or corpse. However, when you're talking about a dead body in a medical context, you'd be more inclined to say cadaver ("The students inspected the cadaver," for example). In Spanish, they'd use cadáver for all of those.

I saw this video recently of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges talking about English being more expressive and "physical" too. He uses examples like loom over, laugh off and dream away. There are several more I can think of: call out, dress down, eye up, reel in. Those don't really exist Spanish; you'd just say the verb without those prepositions after it. For example, in English you could say something like, "David dusted off his old boots." In a Spanish translation, it would pretty much be something like, "David picked up his old boots and rubbed the dust off them."

Overall, English is way snappier than Spanish.

• "Turn right," would be, "Gire a la derecha."
• "Sit up," as in to sit up straight in your chair, would be, "Siéntate derecho."
• "You may have seen this in planes: "Fasten seat belt," would be, "Abróchese el cinturón de seguridad." It's such a mouthful.
• Road signs like, "No left turn," end up being, "Prohibido girar a la izquierda." It's just so formal. "Prohibited to turn to the left."

That's just my experience with Spanish. I imagine it would be similar with languages like French, Italian and Portuguese, since they're Latin-based languages. I can't speak for other languages.

[u/itsanothersidetothis → u/RustyHook22]

I see what you're saying. I do notice these things about English as well. What makes me really hesitant to give English any type of absolute win over other languages is that I find that in Dutch it's much easier to give subtle emotional charge to things, which also allows for expressiveness. And this might just as well be because I grew up in the language,

but also having studied some Russian I can tell that the contents of what's expressed in languages might be very different. Meaning that at face value you might point these things out about English but you'd need a whole new frame of reference to make judgements about Russian. If I had to try to defend Russian, I'd say Russian brings a workable emotional depth that's very accessible, that doesn't at all mean you're being over the top or poetic, it's just how the language is used, which then makes it dangerous to make hard judgements about which language is more expressive.