Potato, Puhtawtoe

My friend Jenny, who probably has the most beautiful voice in all of Kentucky, wrote a song for this week's show that I am happy to get to play.  Spoiler alert: it's about ferris wheels.*  Also, & I read that this isn't remotely how they say it in French, Attention, révélations sur l'intrigue!**  She sings the song in French.

In private correspondence (well, we were texting), she said she was afraid that she may have "butchered the pronunciation."  I responded, "Isn't singing just another way of butchering pronunciation"?***

Whenever I've thought about writing songs, I find myself more or less just singing lines as if reciting a poem.  But my favorite songwriters will wrap & warp words along with the music - so much so I can't understand some of them without a lyrics sheet.  Technically, then, when they sing the word "love" in such a way that it seems to have four syllables, isn't that butchering the pronunciation?

Don't get me wrong - I wouldn't have it any other way.  But there's a science fiction story that I'll never write that has this plot: aliens come to earth after taking decades to learn the language, but misunderstanding leads to tragedy when it's discovered that the aliens learned English from specific songs & the people of United States take their attempts to communicate as a kind of malicious mocking.****

& are there any people whose first exposure to a language was in song rather than spoken?  Doesn't that seem to be something someone should be studying?  Why does music make such a show of mispronunciation?  Surely it's always done that, right?

So many questions for a Sunday night!  I have no answers.  Anyway, I reiterate: I wouldn't have it any other way.

* I know I'm supposed to capitalize the f in ferris wheel but I am not going to do that because even though it's named after a person who built a famous one (not at that time called a ferris wheel), I think it's time to acknowledge that no one thinks the ferris in ferris wheel is a name but just another word like the merry in merry-go-round or the roller in roller coaster.

** The French use the word "spoiler" too, but probably pronounce it, "spoy-lair."

*** I also told her that I thought this was an insight that I didn't imagine I was capable of.  Which may explain me going on about it now.

**** Hey! I just did a Kilgore Trout bit!