"Hello" sung by a Kazakh

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Here is Dimash Kudaibergen singing "Hello":

His voice is electrifying, rich with emotion and having an incredible range of 6 octaves and 2 semitones from C2 to D8.

As with Enkh Erdene, the Mongolian cowboy, singing "Amarillo by Morning", this is an astonishing performance.  Dimash has performed songs in twelve different languages:  his native language Kazakh, as well as Russian, Mandarin, English, French, Ukrainian, Italian, Kyrgyz, Turkish, Serbian, German, and Spanish (source).  He speaks Kazakh and Russian, and studies English and Mandarin.  Although his rendition of "Hello" sounds natural and is easy to understand, I can detect many points at which his English has non-native nuances.  Nonetheless, it is remarkably good for being only one of the dozen different languages in which he sings.

I hope that Language Log readers will track down his performances in other languages.  I'm especially curious to hear what he sounds like when singing in Mandarin and Russian (which is probably virtually native).

[h.t. Judy Chang]



10 Comments

  1. Robert W. M. Greaves said,

    February 14, 2019 @ 8:43 pm

    Dimash singing in Russian:

    https://youtu.be/anKmU1J0l9g

  2. Victor Mair said,

    February 14, 2019 @ 9:13 pm

    Fantastic!

    Thank you, Robert. That's a great beginning in our tour of Dimash's virtuoso performances.

  3. Patrick said,

    February 14, 2019 @ 10:06 pm

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGBxbj_RMKB22rhJnK9qReg

  4. shubert said,

    February 14, 2019 @ 10:07 pm

    Prof.
    this is:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iWO7uGnavI

  5. Victor Mair said,

    February 14, 2019 @ 10:51 pm

    Please individually identify the language of the song you find.

  6. Robert W. M. Greaves said,

    February 14, 2019 @ 11:17 pm

    Dimash singing "Confessa" in Mandarin and Italian and "The Diva Dance" (in alien I guess)

    https://youtu.be/23HYymUjIHE

  7. Ricardo said,

    February 15, 2019 @ 6:48 am

    One thing that is curious about singing: often a person can sing passably well–sometimes even really well–in a language that s/he cannot properly speak.

  8. Philip Taylor said,

    February 15, 2019 @ 9:28 am

    Six octaves + is a quite remarkable range, but the singer who completely blew my mind when I first heard him was Freddy Sahin-Scholl. There are many videos online of later recordings, but this one is truly special — almost certainly the first time that he sang Carpe diem in public, and the reactions of judges and audience alike are truly exceptional and moving. I cannot find a public copy online, so have temporarily uploaded a private copy to Dropbox, purely for private research by readers of Language Log.

  9. Nobody said,

    February 16, 2019 @ 4:34 pm

    You link to the wikipedia article for the Adele song "Hello", but the singer is singing the Lionel Richie song, "Hello" , which has different lyrics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hello_(Lionel_Richie_song)

  10. Victor Mair said,

    February 16, 2019 @ 10:36 pm

    Here's Lionel Richie singing his version:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDZcqBgCS74

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