The Rain in Spain

For information about rain in Spain, see Climate of Spain.

"The Rain in Spain" is a song from the musical My Fair Lady, with music by Frederick Loewe and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner. The song was published in 1956 very similar to piano trio in C minor 3rd movement by Josep Suk.

The song is a turning point in the plotline of the musical. Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering have been drilling Eliza Doolittle incessantly with speech exercises, trying to break her Cockney accent speech pattern. The key lyric in the song is "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain", which contains five words that a Cockney would pronounce with [æɪ] or [aɪ][1] – more like "eye" [aɪ] than the Received Pronunciation diphthong [eɪ]. With the three of them nearly exhausted, Eliza finally "gets it", and recites the sentence with all long-a's. The trio breaks into song, repeating this key phrase as well as singing other exercises correctly, such as "In Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly happen", and "How kind of you to let me come", in which Eliza had failed before by dropping the leading 'H'.

Origin

The phrase does not appear in Shaw's original play, but is used in the 1938 film of the play. According to The Disciple and His Devil, the biography of Gabriel Pascal by his wife Valerie, it was Gabriel Pascal who introduced the famous phonetic exercises "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain" and "In Hertford, Hereford, and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen" into the script of the film, the first of which was later used in the song in My Fair Lady.[2]

Spanish rain does not actually stay mainly in the plain. It falls mainly in the northern mountains.[3] In Spanish, the phrase was translated as La lluvia en Sevilla es una maravilla (The rain in Seville is a miracle). The lyric about Hertford, Hereford, and Hampshire implies (but does not entail) that hurricanes ever occur at all in these areas. This implication is false, as the only hurricane force (≥64 knot) winds that do occur in these areas (in the UK) result from extratropical cyclones, which differ from hurricanes in their causes and dynamics.[4]

Translations

The musical has been translated into many languages, with Eliza speaking Berlin, Vienna, Stockholm, Göteborg, Amsterdam, and Budapest dialects. Here is the equivalent of "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain" in various languages:

References

  1. ↑ Wells, John C. (1982b). "Accents of English 2: The British Isles". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 307–308. ISBN 0-521-24224-X.
  2. ↑ Pascal, Valerie, "The Disciple and His Devil," McGraw-hill, 1970. p. 83.
  3. ↑ http://maps.howstuffworks.com/spain-annual-precipitation-map.htm
  4. ↑ http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/23degrees/2011/09/whats_in_a_name.html
  5. ↑ Almagor, Dan, ""Barad yarad bidrom sfarad: How "The Rain in Spain" Fell in Eretz-Israel," Israel Review of Arts and Letters, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA.org), November 19, 1998.
  6. ↑ Musicalmuzeum.hu - Lyrics of "Lenn délen édes éjen édent remélsz!"]
  7. ↑ The Internet Movie Transcriptions Database, "Family Guy S3 E1-11."
  8. ↑ Planet Family Guy, "Subtitle Scripts."
  9. ↑ Kilian, Michael, "Offing Broadway Satirical Revue Grows Into A Star-Bashing Biggie," Chicago Tribune, 6 November 1988, p. 28. (Full Text)
  10. ↑ Kuchwara, Michael, "Alessandrini zeroes in on next Broadway target ," Knight-Ridder, 5 March 2000.
  11. ↑ Clausen, Alf and Michael Price, "Not On My Clothes," T C F Music Publishing, Inc., 2006.
  12. ↑ Stephen King (2011). Salem's Lot. Random House. p. 653.
  13. ↑ http://top40.about.com/od/top10lists/tp/Glee-Songs-Report-Card-Season-3-Episode-18.htm
  14. ↑ http://www.nyanko.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/fas/hat_weath.html
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