"The Rain in Spain"
Julie Andrews as Eliza, Rex Harrison as Higgins, Robert Coote as Pickering in "The Rain in Spain" segment, 1957
Song
Published1956
GenreMusical theatre
Composer(s)Frederick Loewe
Lyricist(s)Alan Jay Lerner

"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.

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 "proper" long-As. 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 ever happen", in which Eliza had failed before by dropping the leading 'H'.

Origin

The phrase does not appear in Shaw's original play Pygmalion, on which My Fair Lady is based, but it 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 he 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, both of which were later used in the song in My Fair Lady.[2]

In other languages

Versions of "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain" in various languages include:

  • Danish: "En snegl på vejen er tegn på regn i Spanien" ("A snail on the road is a sign on rain in Spain")
  • Dutch: "Het Spaanse graan heeft de orkaan doorstaan" ("The Spanish wheat has survived the hurricane")[3]
  • German: "Es grünt so grün, wenn Spaniens Blüten blüh'n" ("it turns so green when Spain's flowers bloom")[4]
  • Hebrew: "ברד ירד בדרום ספרד הערב‎" ("Barad yarad bidrom sfarad haerev": Hail fell in southern Spain this evening.)[5]
  • Hungarian: "Lenn délen édes éjen édent remélsz."[6]
  • Italian: "La rana in Spagna gracida in campagna" ("The frog in Spain croaks in the country side") and "Nei Pirenei c'è aria di nevai" ("In the Pyrenees there are blizzards brewing")
  • Polish: "W Hiszpanii mży, gdy dżdżyste przyjdą dni" ("It drizzles in Spain when come the rainy days")
  • Spanish: "La lluvia en Sevilla es una pura maravilla"[7] (The rain in Sevilla is a true marvel) playing with the sound of the "ll").
  • Swedish: "Den spanska räven rev en annan räv" ("The Spanish fox tore another fox")

References

  1. ↑ Wells, John C. (1982). Accents of English 2: The British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 307–308. ISBN 0-521-24224-X.
  2. ↑ Pascal, Valerie, "The Disciple and His Devil," McGraw-hill, 1970. p. 83.
  3. ↑ "07 Het Spaanse Graan Wim Sonneveld & Magriet De Groot & Paul Storm". YouTube. 2020-09-19. Archived from the original on 2021-12-19. Retrieved 2021-10-02.
  4. ↑ "Es grünt so grün, wenn Spaniens Blüten blühen - My Fair Lady". YouTube. 2019-06-06. Archived from the original on 2021-12-19. Retrieved 2021-05-26.
  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". Mfa.gov.il. Retrieved 9 October 2018.
  6. ↑ "Dilatato corde - Szárnyaló szívvel - Dudás Róbert Gyula - Némo honlapja ~ Musicalmúzeum". Musicalmuzeum.hu. Retrieved 9 October 2018.
  7. ↑ "Origen del dicho: "La lluvia en Sevilla es una maravilla"". sevilla (in Spanish). 2013-10-07. Retrieved 2020-03-10.
  8. ↑ Kilian, Michael, "Offing Broadway Satirical Revue Grows Into A Star-Bashing Biggie", Chicago Tribune, 6 November 1988, p. 28. (Full Text)
  9. ↑ Kuchwara, Michael, "Alessandrini zeroes in on next Broadway target", Knight-Ridder, 5 March 2000.
  10. ↑ "Glee Songs Report Card - Season 3 Episode 18 - Choke". Archived from the original on 2016-01-13. Retrieved 2016-03-27.
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