It’s been a hot summer! I hope you’re keeping cool and enjoying some fun activities! We are back with another installment of Media Language Learning. Maintaining your language ability and/or learning new things about a foreign language could certainly be one of those fun activities.
A couple of weeks back, I got a request from one of my new subscribers (Love has no limits) to go over quite a few songs. So, since it’s number 2 on the TopHit.ru chart I usually follow for the week of July 30 to August 5, 2018 and this person suggested it, I am going to go over Jah Khalib’s single Medina.
Jah Khalib is a fairly new artist in the Russian pop scene as far as I can tell. The only other song of his that I had heard was Лейла which came out last year (2017). According to his Wikipedia page, Jah Khalib’s first album came out in 2015 and he happens to be from Kazakhstan.
I feel like this song, Medina, really shows a bit of that Kazakh background in both the instrumentation and the imagery of the music video. It’s a cool song.
New words for me from the lyrics
This song had quite a few new words for me in it – especially the verses. Some of the words were somewhat familiar but had a new usage and slightly different from what I knew, so I looked them up to make sure.
Странник – Wanderer, pilgrim, traveler, hiker, nomad
This is the main character of the story and he appears throughout the song. I know the word странный which means strange, so the word seemed familiar, but this is much better than “stranger” which was my initial thought. The first line of the song goes: “Одинокий странник потерял совю дорогу” which I translated as “A lone wanderer lost his way.”
Часовой пояс – time zone
This new vocabulary word is from the second line of the first verse: “Время потеряло часовые пояса” which I think is saying “Time lost all meaning” more or less. I could be reading too much into it.
Измучить – to bedevil, plague, torment, jade
Веретено – spindle
Порок – disease, taint, defect, flaw, evil
As you can see, this first verse was a doozy for me. There was a lot to learn here! The third line of the song has the above three words in it: “Сердце так измучено веретеном пороков”. I also had a hard time deciding how to deal with a “tainted/evil spindle”. It sounds weird in English but here’s how I interpret the line: “His heart was tormented by a tainted spindle.” If anyone can help me with how to interpret that spindle better, I am all ears.
Врать – to lie, make a mistake, talk nonsense
I feel like I should already know this word but I wanted to be sure so I looked it up again. It’s in the second part of the first verse: “Змеи врали страннику, что с ней не станет счастлив он” which I translated as “Snakes lied to the wanderer that he would never be happy with her.” I kept it with the same “snakes” because the English language has the same metaphor for liars.
Намёк – a hint, clue, tip, suggestion
This word is from the first part of the chorus: “Солнечный пик засветит в небе, бросив намёк” which I interpret as: “The midday sun shines in the sky, giving a sign.”
Качать – to rock, swing, sway
Непогода – bad weather, the elements
The second word above I feel like I should have known but maybe I just haven’t seen this usage so it threw me off. Anyway, here’s the line from the song: “Корабль в его разуме качает непогода” which I translate as: “The elements rock the ship in his mind”. Seems like a good metaphor for confusion.
Маятник – pendulum
This word is in the next line from the second verse, so we know what happens: “Но маятник в душе ему укажеть берега” which I interpreted as: “But the pendulum in is soul showed him the shore”. So, this must mean he figured out what to do.
Раскидать – to scatter, throw about, strew around
Полюс – pole, vertex
This line from the song was sad but the next one with the next vocabular word is hopeful: “Жизнь раскидала их по разным полюсам” which I interpreted as: “Life had scattered them to different poles”.
Негласный – secret, private, unspoken, silent, unstated
Here’s the hopeful line with this vocabulary word in it: “Их судбы были связаны законами негласными” which I think means: “Their fates were tied by unspoken laws.” So, even though they were far from one another, they were still tied to each other and could possibly find each other too.
Review of the song and music video
Since I had so much new vocabulary, I unfortunately need to keep this section relatively short. Suffice it to say, I really like this song a lot. The video is also awesome, and I love the costuming in it.
One thing that struck me about the verse that I really like is there is a bit of a call and response between Jah Khalib and the musical instruments. He says a line, then the instruments respond. It’s a super classic musical thing that’s common in jazz, rock, and hip hop. It’s subtle here and I liked it a lot.
I liked the instrumentation of the song as well. It was fun to hear the more traditional instruments and I they added a really nice atmosphere to the whole thing.
Lastly, I liked the subject matter of the song. I love ballads (meaning songs that tell stories) and this one was about a man who was separated from his love but holds hope that they will find each other again.
If I had to complain about anything, it would be the middle of the music video when they go a bit overboard with the cinematography. I get that they want to make a cool video, but I just think it’s better to not pause the song in the middle of a music video because you can’t fit your whole music video story into the song time limit.
Media Language Learning 