Volume 3

[Melvin Schofield]

Aaargh! This is getting out of hand!!

[David Herrick]

Hey, the party’s just getting started, Melvin!

Weird Al once wrote a song consisting entirely of palindromes recited in a Bob Dylan voice. That’s bizarre and amusing enough in its own right, but here’s a reversed version of it where you can see/hear the significant differences between spelling something backwards and pronouncing it backwards. (Still sounds like Dylan, though!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu82jIkEKR8

An interesting factor is that a lot of vowel sounds that we spell with a single letter actually transition from one sound to another. For example, the “long” sounds of a, i, and o are pronounced something like eh-ee, ah-ee, and uh-oo. So backwards they become “yeah”, “yah”, and “wuh”.

Then there are more mundane issues, such as single sounds that are spelled with two letters (sh, th, ng, etc.), and single letters that can be pronounced in multiple ways. These things really complicate the process of writing something phonetically palindromic!

[Jung Roe]

David wow, some interesting and fascinating videos, thanks for posting them! So it is possible to have a song sound the same forwards or backwards. It takes the whole discussion on backwards recordings to another scientific level. Palindromic, learned something new. This all reminds me decades ago hearing on the radio about a hidden message in “Stairway To Heaven” when played backwards. Given MLT has done some backwards effect in Glass Onion, and the ending of Nothing Is In Vain, this is all so cool and fascinating stuff!