Caio Rossi wrote:
> I need help from native speakers of English on the List. A friend of mine is
> recording the voice on a guitarrist's album. They're Brazilian too, but the
> lyrics are in English. He asked me to revise them and I found something
> that, to me, would sound terrible in any language: "... like burning flames
> on fire..."
> The problem is that the guitarrist insists that he checked that with a
> Brazilian English teacher and he said native speakers would say it. Is that
> true? Even if it's true, don't you agree it's not only a big cliche, but
> also inappropriate?
I have lived in the USA almost 50 years, and I have NEVER heard that
expression. Any
comments from the other side of the Atlantic?
PS - I agree with you - it makes no sense and is triply redundant. American
audiences
hearing those words, if they understood them, would laugh out loud. Or maybe
they'd
figure they couldn't understand them properly due to the "accent". Now if the
intent is
humor, your friend should "go for it" (a genuine American English expression).
(Then
again, native English-speakers' pop-song lyrics aren't always so great - after
30+ years,
the Turtles' lyric, "So happy together. How is the weather." still cracks me
up, though I
like the song anyway.)
Peggy
--
Margaret Harrison, Alexandria, Virginia, USA
"Music for a While Shall All Your Cares Beguile"
mailto:peggyh@i...
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