I can't wait to hear him sing "Leicestershire".

"Noater dayme" grates as much as "Thaydon Boyce" as an egregious, clunking, and ear-mangling mis-pronunciation. I can understand "Noater Dame" when applied to the US university as it's part of US lingo, but when applied to the French locality it should be pronounced as the French pronounce it. Crass song, crap tune, with no redeeming features to these ears other than its end.

Some say Leland....
what do others say?

Is that Freddy Riley?
What he does with the orange band, one wonders?!

"Noater dayme" grates as much as "Thaydon Boyce" as an egregious, clunking, and ear-mangling mis-pronunciation. I can understand "Noater Dame" when applied to the US university as it's part of US lingo, but when applied to the French locality it should be pronounced as the French pronounce it. Crass song, crap tune, with no redeeming features to these ears other than its end.

He vfould haff an enormous schvanshtukker!

"Noater dayme" grates as much as "Thaydon Boyce" as an egregious, clunking, and ear-mangling mis-pronunciation. I can understand "Noater Dame" when applied to the US university as it's part of US lingo, but when applied to the French locality it should be pronounced as the French pronounce it. Crass song, crap tune, with no redeeming features to these ears other than its end.

The Avett Mumford Elephant Revival?  ; )

Funny, I heard this and thought that it had to be something off of the new Andrew Bird CD that came out this week!

"You know I don't mean to embarrass you but I'm a rather brilliant surgeon perhaps I can help you with that hump."
"What hump?"

Funny, I heard this and thought that it had to be something off of the new Andrew Bird CD that came out this week!

It's NOT Andrew Bird? Really?

This always reminds me of Andrew Bird...

I had a hunch you'd play this.

It's got a whopping vocabulary, right enough, but the structure is a mess. There's a minority view in linguistic circles that English is a creole language, as those are characterised by the loss of complex structures from the parent languages. I subscribe to this view, not as a linguist, but because it really pisses off English nationalists.

It's pretty much "open source". You can extend it as needed.

It's got a whopping vocabulary, right enough, but the structure is a mess. There's a minority view in linguistic circles that English is a creole language, as those are characterised by the loss of complex structures from the parent languages. I subscribe to this view, not as a linguist, but because it really pisses off English nationalists.

I love this argument.  I'm one of those ethnocentric American, English only speaking people (and I'm a bit embarrassed about it too) and I have to agree.  I understand from many of the people I work with (I work in a very technical, multi-cultural green energy company), non-native English speakers I have befriended over the years, and working in a coffee shop on a large college campus and listening to people from all over the world try to learn English, that English can be easy to pick up on the surface but a monster to master.  The lack of subjunctives can almost make it easier, but English is such a bastardized language that at least half of the words in the language have an origin in another language. 

Basically, at least in the US, we take words, mangle they way they are pronounced, and make them our own. 

Anyone else hearing a bit of Donna The Buffalo in this?

Nope. Consider that English is an 'uninflected' language: no gender, no cases, so no need for agreements such as you have in other European languages. The subjunctive is an unused rump, akin to the appendix in the body, unlike Italian, say, where the subjunctive is an important part of the language. This loss of complexity is characteristic of a creole language derived from one or more languages imposed by colonial masters (in the case of English, that would be Saxons, Norse and Normans).

English is highly irregular compared to many other languages, in terms of pronunciation, spelling, and constructions. It also has a wide (and also irregular) vocabulary, but vocabularly isn't syntax. Being highly irregular doesn't make it grammatically complex, though it does make it a stinker to learn.

I'm not a linguist, and I know that this is a minority hypothesis amongst linguists, but having studied other inflected languages (Italian, French, Gaelic) and knowing bits of others (German, Spanish) the contrast between them and English is glaring. IMO English is a real dog's dinner (to use an English idiom). But what the hey, we're going a bit off-topic here, even if the discussion is far more interesting than this song.

I kinda love this song. I can relate to the analogy of the hunchback who performs miracles and they go unnoticed because he's, well, a hunchback.  Never judge a book by its cover. In fact, never judge.

Every time I hear this song, I just love it more.  "Miracles" happen every day, but they're not Biblical miracles - they're just everyday events that happen to be in the right place at the right time. Serendipitous.

And that's why I love this song. 

Returning to the music..

I think this may be the saddest thing I've ever heard. I like it, but it's acutely melancholy.

Some say Leland sounds like Jack Johnson.  

Some say Leland....
what do others say?

Nope. Consider that English is an 'uninflected' language: no gender, no cases, so no need for agreements such as you have in other European languages. The subjunctive is an unused rump, akin to the appendix in the body, unlike Italian, say, where the subjunctive is an important part of the language. This loss of complexity is characteristic of a creole language derived from one or more languages imposed by colonial masters (in the case of English, that would be Saxons, Norse and Normans).

English is highly irregular compared to many other languages, in terms of pronunciation, spelling, and constructions. It also has a wide (and also irregular) vocabulary, but vocabularly isn't syntax. Being highly irregular doesn't make it grammatically complex, though it does make it a stinker to learn.

I'm not a linguist, and I know that this is a minority hypothesis amongst linguists, but having studied other inflected languages (Italian, French, Gaelic) and knowing bits of others (German, Spanish) the contrast between them and English is glaring. IMO English is a real dog's dinner (to use an English idiom). But what the hey, we're going a bit off-topic here, even if the discussion is far more interesting than this song.

It's got a whopping vocabulary, right enough, but the structure is a mess. There's a minority view in linguistic circles that English is a creole language, as those are characterised by the loss of complex structures from the parent languages. I subscribe to this view, not as a linguist, but because it really pisses off English nationalists.

Loss of complex structures?  You're kidding, right?