Learning Languages Through Music

[gmckee1985]

I remember in high school our teacher used to play some Spanish music to help us learn the language. Nobody would take it seriously though. People would laugh more than they would sing. I think that's more of a product of immaturity though. I don't know that it helped us pick up the language back then because most kids didn't take it seriously.

[Determined2014]

I think it's a fun way to learn new words and helps with pronunciation. Although I don't think it's too helpful for sentence structure because a lot of songs are composed of sentence fragments and phrases.

I listened to a lot of J-Pop when I was learning Japanese and I am now able to translate the lyrics as a I listen to them.

I've been trying to listen to K-Pop to get used to the pronunciation of Korean words and I think it's helpful.

Has anyone used music to help them learn languages?

I have tried to learn a language through music, but like you said, I did not find it very helpful, though it does help in some kind of way.

[elenamarie]

Yes. I am not a native English speaker and I mostly learn English just by listening to songs. I find it is easier to learn that way because it is fun and not boring at all specially if I'm listening to a song that I really love, sometimes I would sing along too to practise my pronounciation as well.

[zabina12]

I have not specifically use music or songs to learn a new language.

But I am aware that it can be useful in learning a new language or even just learning few words. I have learned some Spanish words through listening to some songs on Telenovelas.

[aaronlindsay]

i think that this is one of the best ways to learn how to speak a language. It is a very interesting way for you to be able to memorize a language. I think that i found that a great solution in learning how to learn a language and understand things very easily. It is also a very nice and entertaining way to learn things. i have found it very helpful on multiple occasions.

[GamerPerson]

I think you maybe on to something! Instead of just simply listening to a song in another language, why hasn't there been a program to teach via music. Think about it: Music is one of the things that invoke memories, right? Why not have little diddies dedicated to learning new words and phrases? Seriously, why wasn't this thought up before?!

[Muthoni]

Right now, I am listening to Indian music. I stumbled upon the radio station and the music is so relaxing even though I do not understand a single word. Yes I have been able to learn a few words from music some time back. I have discovered that I need to be taught a language by a tutor for me to understand it.  That said listening to the music helps a lot to appreciate a certain language.

[anna3101]

Music is extremely useful for me. I love discovering new songs and artists, that's a huge bonus for each language I'm learning. I learn some vocabulary, expressions and grammar structures. With time, I remember most of the songs by heart and it also helps.

However, I've heard there was new research pointing towards singing as the best way to learn. Supposedly, people who sang songs in a foreign languages remembered the words better than those who only listened. I wonder how much of it is true and if the benefits still exist for those whose singing abilities are very modest, as is the case with me.

[bittersblue]

I think it depends on the language. Listening to music never helped me with Chinese. As everyone knows, Chinese is a tonal language but that kinda gets thrown out when singing (for obvious reasons). Therefore, listening to music doesn't particularly help me. There's so many homonyms in Chinese, if you remove the tone, it gets really hard to understand words sometimes (a lot of the time context helps, but again, it's harder in music for me).

However, in Japanese or Hindi music, I have a much easier time picking out words that I know/words that I want to look up the meaning of. I still don't use them as learning tools really, but they help with immersion.

[hungary93]

When I was a teenager I liked to get the lyrics of my favourite songs and listen to them while reading the words. I think that it can really help you with pronunciation. Also the rhythm of the songs help you to store the words in your memories.

[Miya]

I remember in high school our teacher used to play some Spanish music to help us learn the language. Nobody would take it seriously though. People would laugh more than they would sing. I think that's more of a product of immaturity though. I don't know that it helped us pick up the language back then because most kids didn't take it seriously.

I think it depends on the music. The same thing happened to me in my French class. No one liked the music my teacher played so no one paid attention. But later we got to do a project on music and everyone had a good time because it was music we actually had an interest in.

[agentzero]

American and British culture were widespread in my country when I started to learn English so of course I listened to their music as well. It used to be weird thinking in English and then talking and having to stop yourself before you end each sentence because you were headed for a nasty word. Learning language through music is fine, as long as you don't listen to too much hip hop

[Chris_A]

I love listening to music, and, while I have not tried it yet, I think it could help you learn a new language for sure. At least, you could have a solid foundation from where to start getting a good grip on the language. You can easily translate songs from their native language to your own, and thus, you learn new words and memorize them.

[rcdpink]

Learning language through music is a very very effective methodology. This practice is very ancient and old and never seems to lose its taste. I must say though that this music must be very much well Grammatically structured because there are a lot of rubbish being published out there on the radio today. Learning language through music is very helpful because It is even through music that we learn to love or even to say our alphabet.

[DivaDee]

Yep, mostly because I have wide taste in music I'll pretty much listen to any genre (except for country music, the category is ve~ry slim with me), so because of this I have a tendency to try and find the soundtrack from said show/movie so I end up finding really old to foreign songs and since I mostly watch stuff in the native tongue that I know/studying I end up finding songs with that language range... So yeah...

[wolfette]

I like to listen to music in other languages to pick up words I hadn't heard before. I find this often happens when I listen to Spanish music, despite being fairly fluent in Spanish. I also like to listen to music in other languages as well. I listen to bands from Spain, Portugal, Poland, Korea, Finland, Denmark and Japan fairly often, despite not being fluent in all of those languages. I've definitely picked up words and phrases that way though. 

[VinayaSpeaks]

English is the second language for me. I learned English by reading. However, learning language just by reading is not enough, you need to listen, write as well as speak. Songs and movies are wonderful techniques to learn language. Since spoken language is different from written language, you need to listen to how the native use the language. Since people enjoy music,music can actually teach language

[Lingua Franca]

I don't know how you could learn how to speak a language by listening to music. normally songs use a good dose of artistic license and don't sound the same as the spoken language. There are a whole lot of videos on YouTube that show people singing a song just to find out later that they were miss pronouncing the words and in fact the song had a completely different meaning to what they thought it meant.

[djordje87]

I used to do it for English when I was a kid. I believe that this is a good way to learn a language and learn  something more about it, about people using it and country those people live. It is especially suitable for the kids because most of them and even grown ups love music. This or that kind but still music. I am into this kind of learning and even when I held private classes with some kids I played them some good songs, oldies where good English was present, I mean the Beatles and similar acts.

[alieangeles]

I think I might have an interesting take on this, since my third language and current focus is American Sign Language. It's very common to get your start in sign language through music. To this day, there's nothing more fun for me than signing along to a song as it plays, or watching someone else, on YouTube usually, sign to or teach how to sign a song. You get extremely expressive, learn new words, and really have fun doing it. Music is always a great tool to use when learning languages. Even babies and toddlers participate in this; it's probably part of the reason they learn so much quicker than we, as adults, do!

[alieangeles]

I think I might have an interesting take on this, since my third language and current focus is American Sign Language. It's very common to get your start in sign language through music. To this day, there's nothing more fun for me than signing along to a song as it plays, or watching someone else, on YouTube usually, sign to or teach how to sign a song. You get extremely expressive, learn new words, and really have fun doing it. Music is always a great tool to use when learning languages. Even babies and toddlers participate in this; it's probably part of the reason they learn so much quicker than we, as adults, do!

[FenWoFon]

 I've had a good experience regarding that kind of thematic because when I was a little one I used to listen to all kinds of music whether it was in russian, spanish, english, korean and even japanese and it definitely helped me improve my vocabulary and the pronounciation when I got to learn some of these languages later on my life. I'd recommend everyone to listen to foreign music every once in a while, it will come really handy.

 

[petesede]

On 8/27/2013 at 4:47 PM, Ariel said:

I think it's a fun way to learn new words and helps with pronunciation. Although I don't think it's too helpful for sentence structure because a lot of songs are composed of sentence fragments and phrases.

 

I listened to a lot of J-Pop when I was learning Japanese and I am now able to translate the lyrics as a I listen to them.

 

I've been trying to listen to K-Pop to get used to the pronunciation of Korean words and I think it's helpful.

 

Has anyone used music to help them learn languages?

A good chunk of my vocabulary in Korean came from going to clubs for a night, dancing, and then buying the CDs and translating the lyrics of my favorite songs.  Even thought the lyrics are sometimes silly, you can still learn a few dozen words each song, and then when you go to the club again, you reeinforce that learning in a fun way.

sarang hay

[GennevierAnderson]

Probably this is one of the best ways out the to familiarize yourself with the word pronunciation of a language. I remember myself listening to a lot of American music, until a certain point when I realized I know the perfect pronunciation for a variety of words, but I also have no idea how to pronounce several words which are used less times than others. However, there can be a clear point where learning through music is a bad idea, as there are a wide set of artists, mainly they're American, which intentionally denatures the pronunciation of a word in order to make it sound cooler or to make it rhyme.

[CosmicSeven]

I play an instrument and it's one of the reasons that I have confidence with learning thai. It is the ultimate expression in figuring out how to translate sounds into obscure meaning, so having a sound with a strict meaning that has rules and specifics isn't that bad in contrast to musical notes.