Songs have a place in learning languges

General discussion about learning languages
Khayyam
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Re: Songs have a place in learning languges

Postby Khayyam » Sun Jan 09, 2022 3:31 am

Mentecuerpo, I love your style.

Music is actually the entire reason I caught fire with German in the first place. I heard the song "Bombe" by Eisbrecher and had a visceral, irresistible reaction. It was like falling in love at first sight, or firing up a motorcycle and instantly knowing you'd kill to own it just from hearing the rumble. I wanted to make the song a part of me, so rather than merely look up an English translation of the lyrics, I looked up a German transcription and plugged one word at a time into Google Translate, memorizing the song line by line until I knew it by heart and knew what every word meant. (I'll always be annoyingly proud that the first thing I ever learned how to say in German was, "Place the bomb, baby, tick tock--redeem the world and eradicate it.")

When I was at a stage where I had a decent vocabulary from reading but could still hardly understand a word of German speech, I used songs more than slowed-down speech to bridge the gap. When I hear people talking at an unnaturally slow speed, I feel like a dumb five-year-old being lectured, and my irritation makes it hard to concentrate. But most singing is naturally slow, and if I choose the right songs, I get a sense of emotional connection and validation which is the opposite of that blockhead-five-year-old feeling.
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Re: Songs have a place in learning languges

Postby M23 » Sun Jan 09, 2022 4:21 am

I can certainly empathize with this. I am not super active with German right now, but I got Revolverheld and Clueso's new album for Christmas. One of the tunes captured my ear, Der Letzte Song. I am not too sure what they are singing about just yet, but I want to try and translate the song and figure it out. I am running into some of the lines that need some context because they don't seem to make sense with translation. I'll probably bring them to the German Group once I have everything figured out.

Der Letzte Song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCXSvsLRTDg
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Re: Songs have a place in learning languges

Postby Sonjaconjota » Sun Jan 09, 2022 8:52 am

Ug_Caveman wrote:From the top of my head:
Marco Borsato, Jeroen van der Boom, De Opposites (if you like rap), Do (famous for singing the lyrics to DJ Sammy's cover of 'Heaven'), Tabitha, Trijntje Oosterhuis, Miss Montreal (and Davina Michelle who F1 fans might recognise also has some songs in Dutch but she mostly sings in English.)

Oh, and if you like annoying children's party songs:


*Apologies to mods, double posted by mistake so deleted the other one as soon as I realised


Thank you!
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Re: Songs have a place in learning languges

Postby BeaP » Sun Jan 09, 2022 10:13 am

I find listening to songs very efficient. When I was a teenager learning English, I used to watch music channels all the time, and I knew the lyrics of several songs by heart. Children learn poems by heart in the school, and I think they do it for similar reasons: widening vocabulary, getting to know more complex grammatical structures. The problem is that I don't consume music any more in this amount, moreover, I'm slightly irritated by most of the songs. I remember my parents were irritated as well when I did the massive listening as a teenager, so I think it's kind of normal.

There are some songs that I listen to a couple of times, and I usually meet them in TV series. In German I liked very much Der Pass (Pagan Peak). The scene when the main character starts to sing in a bar in excellent. He sings Die Kinettn wo i schlof by Wolfgang Ambros. I also liked the songs of Babylon Berlin.

In Italian I got from Netflix's Suburra: Pop porno by Il Genio. From La Casa de Papel Centro di gravità permanente by Franco Battiato. And also from Baby Da sola / In the Night by Tommaso Paradiso. But my favourite group for language learning is Coma Cose. I don't remember how I got to know them.

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Re: Songs have a place in learning languges

Postby luke » Sun Jan 09, 2022 11:00 am

On love of music and teens and English, a great one with lots of lyrics is:


One cool thing about "American Pie" for language learners is that one can find videos that explain the song, if you become curious.

This one has poignant lyrics:



In Spanish, I like Julieta Venegas.

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Re: Songs have a place in learning languges

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sun Jan 09, 2022 7:05 pm

Natalia Jiménez is a favorite of mine. She is a popular Mexican singer who was originally from Spain, and you'll hear her roots in her pronunciation in this song of the word "corazón", among other words.
Note that there is on this forum a thread for songs in Spanish, started by Iguanamon, but at the moment I cannot find it. :(
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Re: Songs have a place in learning languges

Postby golyplot » Sun Jan 09, 2022 7:53 pm

Listening to music is one of the worst ways to learn a language, and I don't know why anyone recommends it. Understanding song lyrics is absolute Hard Mode - you don't have context or intonation to help you guess the meaning like you do with normal speech, etc. Ever since I discovered the possibility of listening to podcasts for passive listening, I'll never go back. They're so much easier to understand than even slow paced songs.
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Re: Songs have a place in learning languges

Postby sherbert » Sun Jan 09, 2022 8:17 pm

Have to agree with the above-mentioned to a certain extent. I wouldn't say that songs are completely worthless, but I find that podcasts and extemporaneous commentary, even about mundane things, are much more helpful and constructive in the long run.

The two most meaningful Mandarin internet experiences for me, where I was able to understand 100 percent, involved a native speaker assembling a camp stove and cooking two ears of corn in it, and a tour of an almost abandoned railway station, complete with chickens running around the premises which were occupied by peasants who had relocated there.

The vocabulary from both of these accounts was broader than almost anything a learner could get from song lyrics, which tend to be about a limited range of subjects usually, although some children's songs which teach the names of animals, etc., can be useful for learners.
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Re: Songs have a place in learning languges

Postby FeoGringo » Fri Jan 14, 2022 1:18 am

Glad to see I won't be totally outnumbered when I share my personal opinion that songs and music are not good for language learning. Songs and music often break the "rules" of a language whether through creative phrasing or intonation and tweaked pronunciation that you would never hear out in the real world. For me, it's up there with learning a language through poetry (you could argue some music is poetry).
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Re: Songs have a place in learning languges

Postby Beli Tsar » Fri Jan 14, 2022 10:00 am

golyplot wrote:Listening to music is one of the worst ways to learn a language, and I don't know why anyone recommends it. Understanding song lyrics is absolute Hard Mode - you don't have context or intonation to help you guess the meaning like you do with normal speech, etc. Ever since I discovered the possibility of listening to podcasts for passive listening, I'll never go back. They're so much easier to understand than even slow paced songs.

Perhaps it might be better to say that it is very variable how useful it is, because it is deeply dependent on, for instance,
1) Musical style - this is obvious, you need clarity, and ideally a decent number of words with connected grammar. This also affects how poetical (difficult!) the vocab is.
2) Language - some languages are just harder for beginners, because you need to pick up fine distinctions of pronunciation to grasp what's going on (e.g. French?) and this is even worse with music.
3) National musical styles - kind of a blend of 1 & 2; some countries like music where you can understand the words, some don't...
4) Learning stage - you need to be far enough on to have decent grasp of pronunciation, but not so far on that the slow repetitive pace of much music is useful rather than just holding you back.

Personally I found Serpent's recommendations of learning via music very helpful, but perhaps that's due to luck with languages and finding music in the right style. I found it very helpful with Persian, which seems to be a relatively easy language to listen to, and in which there were plenty of clearly sung and reasonably discursive songs. I can still remember pounding out Ey Iran (the old national anthem), and the songs of Marjan Farsad were really helpful. Both helped with understanding the culture as well as the language, and with a more distant language like Persian that's important.

With Biblical Hebrew there are clearly sung versions of lots of the Psalms, which are hard in terms of vocabulary but still helpful for internalising grammar.

But it's easy to imagine French, for instance, being much harder. And Though it is my strongest language, I couldn't pick up anything at all from Koine Greek death metal.*

*Yes, there is really Koine death metal.
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