The Unique Essence of Languages

You know, it's very interesting. We hear so many different songs on the radio every single day. Countless new albums, songs, bands, genres, and styles are appearing out of nowhere. However, if you actually stop to think about all that you're listening to- there lies a common thread: English.

Some of us claim that we know all there is about music, or we are specialists in all the kinks of a genre of music though we always forget that English is not the only language in the world. We pride ourselves in knowing this language, which isn't exactly universal but very close to it. Though in reality, we use it as a box. A box that has parameters in which we become ignorant of all the music in different languages.

I wanted to try something new this past winter. For Christmas, my parents asked me what I wanted as a gift. I said that I wanted music. To my parents, however, music isn't specific enough. Long story short, after perusing around the internet I saw that Kari Jobe had a new album, Where I find you, and not only that she also had a version recorded in Spanish, Donde Te Encuentro. I don't know what really came over me, but I really wanted to own this album and listen to it-rather than the English recording. Quite frankly, after listening to it I only understood about half of the words but I felt that it conveyed a unique essence that the English version didn't. 

Here are the two versions of one of her songs off the album.

When you translate words into another language-there is bound to be some change in the literal translation-take the Bible for example. There are quite the amount of translations! Though if you listen to these different translations-the Spanish, albeit not the original recorded version, has a fluidity in the diction that the English doesn't have. Why? Well from what I've learned from Vocal Diction- each language has their own vowels and consonants. Spanish is very similar to Italian in many aspects, more so than English. In the English language we use many schwas and tend to have darker vowels. Not to mention homophones and that several words can have different pronunciations-don't you always fret when the word "Bow" comes up when you're singing? Also, examine the everyday conversation between English and Spanish. I mean when I first heard people speaking Spanish my first thoughts were: "Was that a sentence, or a paragraph?" The majority of the words in Spanish end in a vowel, whereas English contains many hard consonants at the end of the words- which interrupts/partially interrupts the air flow depending on the consonant. So really, this "fluidity" that I feel/hear is really the more constant and consistent air flow Spanish words produce when compared to English.

It really makes you wonder, in this case, does translating a song from English to Spanish add fluidity, if so then does translating a song from Spanish to English detract fluidity? That is of course, a whole investigation in itself, but what are your thoughts about this?