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Song Parodies -> "Old Norse Is Insane"
Original Song Title:
"A Horse With No Name"
(MP3)Original Performer:
America
Parody Song Title:
"Old Norse Is Insane"
Parody Written by:
Ingeborg S. Nordén
The Lyrics
Based on a true story: I took an Old Norse language class at my university several years ago, in which *all* the students failed grammar quizzes for several consecutive weeks. That's when the professor realized just how badly written our textbooks were...
On my first quiz that semester,
Couldn't get it, to save my life:
There were fancy words with accent marks;
There were endings, rules and things.
The first lines I read left my mind all abuzz;
Couldn't try to think out loud.
My brain was shot and my mouth was dry--
Didn't dare to make a sound.
I said: "Hey, professor, this Old Norse is insane;
It's no good wearing out from the strain."
The professor, he thinks the book is to blame,
'Cause there ain't no one who can pass--what a shame!
Huh? Huh?
Huh-huh-huh-huh-huh?
Huh-huh-huh?
Huhhhh-huh?
On the next quiz, I saw ev'ryone
with papers marked up in red.
On the third quiz, I heard ev'ryone--
class was wishing they'd all stayed in bed.
From the stories we'd tell,
learning grammar was hell--
It's too bad the language was dead!
So we all said, "Hey, professor, this Old Norse is insane;
It's no good, wearing out from the strain.
With some effort, we might remember a phrase,
But it ain't no fun when we're lost in a haze!"
Huh? Huh?
Huh-huh-huh-huh-huh?
Huh-huh-huh?
Huhhhh-huh?
[instrumental break]
After nine weeks into the course, we'd see
what a mess all those words could be:
lots of fancy words with accent marks,
lots of endings, rules and things.
Can't you show us, professor--are we right with the sounds
in those verbs that you write above?
We're feeling sh**ty 'bout our grades going down
in a course that we thought we'd love.
That's why we said: "Hey, professor, this Old Norse is insane;
It's no good, wearing out from the strain."
The professor, he thinks the book is to blame,
'Cause there ain't no one who can pass--what a shame!
Huh? Huh?
Huh-huh-huh-huh-huh?
Huh-huh-huh?
Huhhhh-huh?
[repeat and fade]
Couldn't get it, to save my life:
There were fancy words with accent marks;
There were endings, rules and things.
The first lines I read left my mind all abuzz;
Couldn't try to think out loud.
My brain was shot and my mouth was dry--
Didn't dare to make a sound.
I said: "Hey, professor, this Old Norse is insane;
It's no good wearing out from the strain."
The professor, he thinks the book is to blame,
'Cause there ain't no one who can pass--what a shame!
Huh? Huh?
Huh-huh-huh-huh-huh?
Huh-huh-huh?
Huhhhh-huh?
On the next quiz, I saw ev'ryone
with papers marked up in red.
On the third quiz, I heard ev'ryone--
class was wishing they'd all stayed in bed.
From the stories we'd tell,
learning grammar was hell--
It's too bad the language was dead!
So we all said, "Hey, professor, this Old Norse is insane;
It's no good, wearing out from the strain.
With some effort, we might remember a phrase,
But it ain't no fun when we're lost in a haze!"
Huh? Huh?
Huh-huh-huh-huh-huh?
Huh-huh-huh?
Huhhhh-huh?
[instrumental break]
After nine weeks into the course, we'd see
what a mess all those words could be:
lots of fancy words with accent marks,
lots of endings, rules and things.
Can't you show us, professor--are we right with the sounds
in those verbs that you write above?
We're feeling sh**ty 'bout our grades going down
in a course that we thought we'd love.
That's why we said: "Hey, professor, this Old Norse is insane;
It's no good, wearing out from the strain."
The professor, he thinks the book is to blame,
'Cause there ain't no one who can pass--what a shame!
Huh? Huh?
Huh-huh-huh-huh-huh?
Huh-huh-huh?
Huhhhh-huh?
[repeat and fade]
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Voting Results
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Voting Breakdown
The following represent how many people voted for each category.
| Pacing | How Funny | Overall Rating | |||||||||
| 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||||||||
| 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||||||||
| 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||||||||
| 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | ||||||||
| 5 | 8 | 9 | 8 |
User Comments
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LMAO!. I can just see you tring to make sense out of nonsense. 555
Awesome, Ingeborg, simply awesome. 5's. Does Old Norse use what we would recognize as an alphabet, or is it more of a pictographic/character-based system?
Old Norse used to have its own alphabet (the runes); but by the time manuscripts were recorded in the late Middle Ages, people had begun switching to an extended version of the Latin alphabet (with some extra letters, like the accented ones I mentioned in the parody).
Ingeborg - So that textbook left the whole class in "the runes"...5's, great job!
You never know what will happen. There might be some little green men out there who speak the same language.
They've gotta sack that old professor and fast, Ingebord - nice to see you don't hold a grudge - loved the scanning onto the original lines - 555
Actually, after my second semester in that class the professor retired...thankfully, by then he had changed the whole way he taught. (Explaining the grammar in the texts as we sight-translated for him, worked a whole lot better than those quizzes!)
liked the matching of the words - great parody 5s
Ja, this was very good...5s
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