It must be the linguist in me that makes me still fascinated with the way that some languages are more expressive and poetic than others. Why do songs sung in French or Italian somehow sound better than songs in English or German, for example? Apart from the fact that much German popular music is rubbish, that is....
One French song which always send tingles down my spine is 'Ne me quitte pas' by Jacques Brel.There is a much-recorded English version, the words of which bear little resemblance to the original French, but after Googling it one day I found this translation, which is so much closer. It is just a shame that Jacques Brel doesn't exactly meet my fantasy of a romantic Frenchman! OK, I know he was a French-speaking Belgian anyway, but he did live in France...
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