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The Ketchup Song

From:Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...>
Date:Wednesday, November 13, 2002, 2:01
There's this song out now by "Las Ketchup" called "Aserejé".  They have
different versions of it in different languages, but in all of them the
chorus is:

»»     Aserejè ja de jè
»»     de jebe tu de jebere seibiunouva
»»     majavi an de bugui an de buididipi

Which is definitely not Spanish.
Some websites i've seen have referred to it as a language of their own,
while others have said that it's just gibberish.  Some pages said that
it's gibberish based on part of "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugarhill Gang
which goes something like this:

»»     i said a hip hop
»»     the hippie the hippie
»»     to the hip hip hop, a you dont stop the rock it
»»     to the bang bang boogie, say up jumped the boogie
»»     to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat

Well, this is Conlang, so let's see what we could make out of "Aserejè"
as a conlang...

It sounds to me like this:
[ a sErEhe ha dE he
  dE hEbE tu dE hEbErE sE:biunowa
  mahavi an dE bugi an dE bwididipi ]

Phonologically, "Aserejeño" (for want of a better name) has at least
these phonemes:
vowels:  / a e E i o u /  and maybe  /E:/
consonants:  / s r h d t b n v g p /

Why am i distinguishing /e/ and /E/?  Because they write two "E"s with
grave accents, both of which sound (at least to me) like [e] while the
rest sound like [E].

The [E:] in [sE:biunowa] |seibiunouva| may be either a long vowel phoneme
by itself, or just a realization of /E/ followed by /i/, merging into
[E:].
Another interesting thing about |seibiunouva| is the |v|, pronounced [w]
here and [v] (or [B]?) in |majavi|.  Since they're written with the same
letter, i think it makes sense that they'd be the same phoneme /v/, which
merges into the [w] in |ou| /ow/.

Aserejeño doesn't seem to like final consonants... all the syllables are
V, CV, or CSV (S=semivowel)

Anyone else know anything about the song?  Or want to take a shot at
"deciphering" Aserejeño?


-Stephen (Steg)
 "word-making is world-making."
     ~ aviva gottlieb zornberg

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Roberto Suarez Soto <ask4it@...>