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We've all had the very annoying experience of having a piece of music stuck in our heads. By what literal translation of a European word is this maddening phenomenon known, and by what word in another European language is such a translation called? By the way, any solutions for the "stuck song" problem will be greatly appreciated.
Question
#76875. Asked by lanfranco. (Mar 07 07 5:13 PM)
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peasypod
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This is an 'Earworm' from the German 'Ohrwurm'.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earworm
As for a solution, might I suggest watching an episode of Murder She Wrote? ;) Boring yourself to tears is a good distraction.
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lanfranco
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Lovely, peasy, but what's the term for the translation?
Come up with that, and I'll hand over a silver ear trumpet. (Does anyone still use those things?)
"Murder She Wrote"? The Maven and I both found the theme music to that show to be extremely annoying. Now, I'm afraid it will replace the song I've been trying to get rid of for two days, which happens to be "The Mighty Quinn" (I think it's the Manfred Mann version, but I'm not sure).
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peasypod
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Well, best I can come up with on an empty tummy is 'metaphrase' from the Greek 'meta' for 'change', and 'phrazein' to 'tell'.
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lanfranco
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Not quite. If you click on a term on your site, you'll find it.
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star_gazer
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Solution - Surrender to the song and accept that it wants to be a part of your consciousness. See if you can listen to the song and experience the joy of that sound.
"But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here,
Ev'rybody's gonna wanna doze."
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McGruff
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Do not watch commercial television. Advertisers must go out of their way to find the most annoying bits of popular "music".
"A little bit mo', a little bit mo'
a little bit mo', a little bit..." arrrgh
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lanfranco
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Well, you're definitely right about that, McGruff. At one point, I couldn't get "Like a Rock" from the Chevy truck commercials out of my head. I was afraid I'd have to go do violence to Bob Seger to fix the problem.
However, just giving up on weekend televised sports events seemed to work.
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toughynutter
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since it appears peasy has gone to bed
Lehnübersetzung
" "Loan translation" is itself a calque of the German "Lehnübersetzung"
As far as a solution though it ain't much of one is try and replace it with a slightly less annoying one, over and over again, After 6 months you might get to a tolerable one.
Commercial is sports are the worst because the variety is so small.
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lanfranco
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"Calque" will do, tn, so you get a piece of the silver ear trumpet.
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peasypod
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Why would peasy go to bed in the middle of the afternoon? Er....don't answer that. ;) Actually, I got tangled up in some work, heaven forbid.
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