neilmac Feb 7, 2017:

My point exactly Both 'canturrear/tararear' translate as "hum" in English. That's all I was saying, in agreement with the dictionary entry cited below.

Adriana Penco Feb 7, 2017:

Me parece que el "problema" está en el texto original. Lo correcto sería cantar o canturrear, porque sólo así se usaría la letra y se podría retener en la memoria. Al tararear, sólo se retiene la melodía. Aquí el problema es si se reemplaza "tararear" por lo que corresponde en inglés y se coloca "sing" o hasta "croon", eso dependerá del contexto...

Charles Davis Feb 7, 2017:

And by the way I didn't actually say that you can't hum lyrics; I said you can't "tararear" lyrics, because "tararear" means replacing the lyrics with "ta-ra". Humming with lyrics is "canturrear".

Charles Davis Feb 7, 2017:

Well... If you google "humming the words to" you'll find it's very common. I think we use "hum" for almost any kind of intoning a song to yourself, melody with or without words, lips open or closed.

neilmac Feb 7, 2017:

Oh yes we can... It depends on how you define humming. Murmuring lyrics sotto voce comes under the overall heading of humming chez moi. Otherwise, what would we call it?

Charles Davis Feb 6, 2017:

But Robin's point is still valid: you can't "tararear" lyrics, only melodies, because tararear means replacing the lyrics with "la-la"-type nonsense syllables. The writer really meant "canturrear", I think.

Charles Davis Feb 6, 2017:

Winnie the Pooh It's perfectly true that strictly speaking humming is with the mouth closed (a buzz) and tararear is with the mouth (slightly) open ("cantar entre dientes y sin articular palabras", DRAE). Tararear is to "ta-ra", or "to la-la-la", as we would be more likely to say. But we don't say it very often, and in practice humming is the most idiomatic equivalent. Someone in the thread Jane's referred to cites Winnie the Pooh:

"and now he was humming it right through, properly. It went like this:
Tra-la-la, tra-la-la,
Tra-la-la, tra-la-la,
Rum-tum-tiddle-um-tum.
Tiddle-iddle, tiddle-iddle,
Tiddle-iddle, tiddle-iddle,
Rum-tum-tum-tiddle-um."

That is precisely "tararear".

neilmac Feb 6, 2017:

Yes In particular the dictionary entry: HUM: intransitive verb - tararear, canturrear. As the old joke says, "if you don't know the words to this song, just take off your shoes and hum"...

Jane Martin Feb 6, 2017:

Ref: Interesting discussion here of the difference between canturrear and tararear https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/canturrear-y-tararea...