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Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Pop culture trivia question (updated)

What is the most popular English language song in history to have a Hebrew word or phrase in the lyrics?

How about the most popular English song with an Arabic word or phrase?

I have my own guesses, what are yours?

Meanwhile, here's an overnight open thread.

UPDATE: The two songs I had in mind were mentioned in the comments. For Hebrew, probably the Black Eyed Peas with I Got a Feeling, mentioning L'Chaim and Mazel Tov; for Arabic I think Bohemian Rhapsody with Bismallah.

"Rock the Casbah" mentioned by Henry is a pretty good choice; Casbah was a word that was probably unfamiliar to most English speakers. The word in English (via French) seems to have a somewhat different meaning than the original Arabic.