The Brothers Four sang a non-PC song called Superman that contains a Spanish refrain. As they sing, in English it is ‘Paint me up in crazy colours so I look like Superman.’ I tried babelfish, and it gave me ‘Pínteme para arriba en colores locos así que parezco superhombre.’ This is not what TBF are singing. Phonetically it sounds a bit like this: Pinta may lay kay lorus packay may yama Superman.
I assume that ‘Pinta may’ is the ‘Pínteme’, and that ‘kay lorus’ is actually ‘colores’ (with an ‘ay’ instead of an ‘o’).
Could it be “Pínteme la colores pa’ que me llama Superman”? Pa is short for para. Para que means “so that” so the sentence would be along the lines of “Paint me in colors so that I call myself Superman.” My Spanish is a little rusty so that’s my educated guess.
Except not “la” – “color” the Spanish word is masculine, and it would be “los” – but in some dialects the final “-s” is elided, and if “los” unstressed took a schwa vowel in place of the -o(s) you’d have a “la” sound – which is emphasized by “me llamo” being heard as “may yama” rather than the -o ending one would expect.
No dude, what I was trying to say is that what they were singing in Spanish was the right translation for what they were singing in English. The babelfish stuff got some of the things wrong, but the gist of what I can get from your (bad, sorry) Spanish phonetic writing is that the meaning is the same as the English meaning. Hence, nothing fancy.
Keep in mind that to me (a foreigner) and even to native born English-speakers, singing English does not sound like spoken English, and words can get confused (heck, there are threads of misheard lyrics in Englishy, by English-speakers).
That said, I think you may have confused the first “lay” for a “de” (of), and the “packay” is “porque” (because). And it is not Pínteme, but píntame.
So the word in correct Spanish would likely look like this: Píntame de colores porque me llamo Superman.
Which in English is Paint me in crazy colors because they call me Superman. Okok, not exactly like the English phrase, but similar to it.
OK, I’m playing it again. It’s definitely an ‘L’ sound. I’d grab a clip, but apparently Audacity doesn’t read mp4 files. (All I get is a quick rasp or click sound.)
Thanks for digging that up. I searched in vain on Youtube for a clip.
Johnny L.A. is right. They definitely sing “Pintamele colores pa’ que me llaman Superman.” Of course, this is not grammatically correct.
Considering they pronounce “colores” as “kay-lore-ace” and the first part as “pinta-ma-lay” it is perhaps not surprising that they fucked up the Spanish translation. The dude can roll his Rs, but he can’t pronounce Spanish to save his life. Of course, this was a different era.
