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Learning Languages Through Music


Ariel

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While it's exciting learn languages through music I would not trust in either grammar construction and pronounciation.

I remember myself listening to the old band Creedence Clearwater Revival, have you ever heard how John Fogerty's (lead singer) wording?

Even today with a successful solo career he doesn't pronounce words, he destroy them!  :grin:

But this is only one of the many examples of paying attention to music towards learning, which is not bad at all because help you to understand that a language has different accents based on regions, ghettos, and so on.

Every new word that you can understand in a song that is not in your native language, it's a step beyond in your learning journey :)

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I learned Urdu through the qawwaali music of Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. It was very esoteric and meditative, not a lot of common everyday vocabulary that you could use while shopping in the markets of Pakistan and North India!

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Before I officially started studying Japanese, I listened to a lot of Jpop and watched a lot of Japanese shows and dramas. I didn't even realize it then, but it really gave me an advantage over my peers. I was able to read and understand a lot more of the language than the other people in my class. It helps even more if you follow the lyrics while you're listening.

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I think it might be useful to expand your vocabulary and understanding of a language you already know, but music lyrics and poetry follow their own rules of structure, grammar, and even pronunciation (to make the rhyme scan) so I don't think it's useful for beginners.

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Of course it worked for me, I have learned lots of new words and their pronunciation. What can be better way of learning other than music as I am the music lover.

This method not only helps me leaning new words but also with the accent thereof.

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I think music helps with pronunciation. I also think it helps build vocabulary. I enjoy listening to music so it is easier for me to listen to music than say listen to Spanish TV, where everyone is speaking Spanish. Sometimes I think it is easier to remember things through music. It puts the words in a context that is familiar.

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Music can be a fun way to learn for me and I feel like I am getting practice even if I am not working too hard at it. I don't feel like it is enough to actually learn the language though. I am always skeptical when I hear people say they learned English by watch tv or movies. They must have done a lot more than just that right?

If you like learning languages through music you should really check out http://www.lyricstraining.com/ if you haven't already seen it.

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I've picked up a few words from some foreign songs, but I've picked up more from listening to ASMR videos in Russian. For those who are unaware, here's a wiki page describing what ASMR is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_sensory_meridian_response

I've only retained a dozen words or so, but it's still pretty cool that I get to learn while relaxing.

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Filipinos tend to learn English quite easily although our pronunciations can leave a lot to be desired. Fortunately, songs help me tame my tongue so my pronunciation is a lot better now. I've listened to French, Korean, and Japanese music and all of those sort of train my tongue into the flow of the spoken language.

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hey Aerial! This is a great thread and you're very right, music does help with learning. Though sometimes it isn't the best for grammar, it does teach a lot about vocabulary and words. For English, I would recommend rappers as they use a lot of words. Like Eminem, but maybe he is a bit too aggressive. And slow singing artists are good too.

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I would believe learning though music would be a daunting task, the reason being music besides being an expression of language is also an expression of specific cultures. Hence, I have never believed in learning languages through musical forms!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hmm, it's interesting to me that some of you have had success learning through music. I have had the opposite experience. I am decent in Spanish, but find it incredibly difficult to understand most Spanish songs.

I guess I am just used to the way certain words are pronounced and get confused when they are enunciated differently through music.

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I think the idea of learning a new language using music is effective. Learning language through music will help those who have a hard time speaking a new language. I have met some good people who incorporate everything with music.

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Funny thing is, before I learned about other languages, I didn't know how the other Asian languages sound like. We would just categorise them as Chinese, which was very lazy. When I grew up a bit, I became interested in other Asian music because of drama series and it really helped me distinguish one from the other while learning a word or two.

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  • 3 weeks later...

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 do find it easy to learn new languages with music. I don't understand them easily but it's a good start if I want to get fluent with it. This is what happened to me and Nihonggo. ;-)

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Hi! I don't think that's a good idea since the voice and the pronunciation are very dostorted. If you want to learn a language with songs you'll have to do it with very slow songs to get more words.

I think it's better to do it through radio podcasts in the language that you want to learn. :)

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Indeed I have; and i can attest to the fact that music does help one to learn a new language. For me, it helped me with learning the accent properly and with also improving on my speed in speaking the language.

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I think music is for those who enjoy the piece of art and listen to music depend on their moods. For me, I never use music as a learning tool because I usually have to look up the lyric in order to follow the songs. I don't usually start the language learning through music.

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