Listening to someone speak a language you don’t know can be a trippy experience. You can glean a bit from someone’s tone of voice and maybe pick out a few words here and there, but otherwise the sounds that are coming out of their mouth are meaningless. And yet, most of us are able to figure out what language someone is speaking if we’re even just a little bit familiar with it. We know what Spanish and French and Chinese sound like, and could easily differentiate between people speaking those languages even we barely even know any words in those languages.
But what about someone rapid-fire rhyming? If you’ve ever wondered what English rapping sounds like to non-English speakers, have we got a treat for you.
Italian singer Adriano Celentano proved with his 1972 pop song, “Prisencolinensinainciusol,” that you don’t have to sing in English to sound like you are. And now, YouTube creator and comedic musician Daniel Thrasher has done the same thing, only with rap music.
The song is called “IGOWALLAH (ft. Hoodie Guy)” and according to people in the comments who have experienced learning English, it’s spot on—right down to being able to pick out a few actual words here and there.
Watch:
He even listed all of the lyrics in the caption of the YouTube video. It’s even a real song on Spotify—and the lyrics are listed there, too.
Imagine having to learn lyrics like this:
Menku. Slemper with flango bajeegin. When you firspepple on a reemstrap, dredju mether wanna gubby?
Many of the more than 34,000 comments on the video confirmed that he nailed it.
“The ‘okays’ being understandable is incredibly real considering okay is a pretty much universal word. Just goes to show the attention to detail.”
“As a non native English speaker this speaks to my childhood. Never thought I’d hear this language ever again but here we are.”
“I showed this to my non English speaking aunt and she said, “you know I don’t speak English, why are you asking me what they are saying?”
“Being able to say not actual words, but actually able to make it sound like it isn’t just slurred together, takes actual skill.”
“It’s actually impressive how well this man can speak gibberish.”
“As a non-English speaker, I can confirm that this is exactly what rap sounds like.”
“The fact that he randomly sings in Spanish just once makes it so much more accurate.”
Other people really liked the song itself.
“This song is proof that even when the lyrics are Gibberish, a catchy beat makes all the difference.”
“I’m not sure why but every few days I come back to this video for no apparent reason it’s weirdly a good song.”
“This is how you know someone puts effort into their videos, they literally rehearsed this, actually memorised the lyrics, dude did everything that it takes to make a real song and he proudly did so. 100/10 music artist dude here.”
“Why does this hit SO HARD.”
If this is your first introduction to Daniel Thrasher, you’ve got a whole world of incredibly impressive musical comedy to discover. You can find him on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.