Writing down song's lyrics

[anna3101]

It seems that a lot of people here like learning new words with the help of songs, so I have a question for you.

How useful do you think it is to write down the words of the song?

When I was a teenager and actively trying to learn French and English, I'd swear by this method as one of the most efficient to improve one's listening skills. Those were the times when the Internet in Russia was practically non-existent, and lyrics were not widely available online. If you really liked a song in a foreign language and wanted to understand what it was all about, the only way to do it was sit down and listen to it for hours on end, trying to pin down all the words correctly, and then look up those you didn't know in a paper dictionary.

It was hard work, and I was rarely lucky enough to understand every single word, but it was a thrill each time you managed to identify some expression, especially if it was one you never heard before. I had a feeling my listening skills were getting better, and I also learnt a lot of vocabulary this way.

Now that I'm a pampered Internet user, I get the lyrics to all of the songs online, sometimes even without having to look for them  - I got myself a program that does most of the work for me.

However, a couple of days I ago I was extremely surprised (and annoyed, I have to admit) to realize that there's nowhere I can find the lyrics to some Austrian Christmas songs that I have on my playlist now. What? Google doesn't have the answer? Yandex is powerless? Seriously?

I had no choice but to come back to the good old "Listen, pause, write down what you hear, listen, pause, try again". Actually, it felt good. I learnt a lot - much more then when I just throw a look at the ready-downloaded lyrics. I felt happy. I now know some grammar structures and some words I hadn't known before.

And I thought - maybe my 14-year-old self was not wrong after all? Maybe it is really useful to write the words down?

What do you think? And what do you do when you love a song in a language you're not fluent in but can't find the lyrics online?

[linguaholic]

6 hours ago, anna3101 said:

It seems that a lot of people here like learning new words with the help of songs, so I have a question for you.

How useful do you think it is to write down the words of the song?

When I was a teenager and actively trying to learn French and English, I'd swear by this method as one of the most efficient to improve one's listening skills. Those were the times when the Internet in Russia was practically non-existent, and lyrics were not widely available online. If you really liked a song in a foreign language and wanted to understand what it was all about, the only way to do it was sit down and listen to it for hours on end, trying to pin down all the words correctly, and then look up those you didn't know in a paper dictionary.

It was hard work, and I was rarely lucky enough to understand every single word, but it was a thrill each time you managed to identify some expression, especially if it was one you never heard before. I had a feeling my listening skills were getting better, and I also learnt a lot of vocabulary this way.

Now that I'm a pampered Internet user, I get the lyrics to all of the songs online, sometimes even without having to look for them  - I got myself a program that does most of the work for me.

However, a couple of days I ago I was extremely surprised (and annoyed, I have to admit) to realize that there's nowhere I can find the lyrics to some Austrian Christmas songs that I have on my playlist now. What? Google doesn't have the answer? Yandex is powerless? Seriously?

I had no choice but to come back to the good old "Listen, pause, write down what you hear, listen, pause, try again". Actually, it felt good. I learnt a lot - much more then when I just throw a look at the ready-downloaded lyrics. I felt happy. I now know some grammar structures and some words I hadn't known before.

And I thought - maybe my 14-year-old self was not wrong after all? Maybe it is really useful to write the words down?

What do you think? And what do you do when you love a song in a language you're not fluent in but can't find the lyrics online?

What about sharing this song and the lyrics here on linguaholic.com? I am curious now ^^

[lushlala]

Although I've heard a lot of people say they've used this method with a great deal of success, I've never put it to the test myself. First off, i'm rubbish at learning lyrics, even English and Setswana ones. Somehow I find I always get carried away by the melody of the song and never get to listen to the actual words. However, I do recognise this could be a handy tool to employ! -especially because like you say @anna3101 , the internet now makes it a lot easier for us to Google the lyrics. 

I had this Italian friend who was big into British pop. She barely spoke English, but when a song she really liked would come on, you would never have guessed that she didn't understand a word of it LOL But she seemed to get the words right, for the most part! I do believe if she'd applied herself more, she could have learnt English in this fashion.

[takibari]

I haven't used it myself. But if we speak of its usefulness as a tool to learning a new language, I'd say it's a great tool. I think it can be an effective tool because to me anything that allows a person to have a 'more experience' of something, creates a bigger impression and impact on one's learning. By 'more experience', I'm talking about the 'active' things you do, such as the listening to the song, the act of writing down the lyrics, then getting help from good old dictionary to make sense of the words. All these help create memory and facilitate better recall.

[agentzero]

When I was a kid, I was the best as far as English went in my school. By far. This is not bragging, it's just a fact. And with such knowledge, I believed I was a native speaker. Boy, was I in for a treat when I tried to write down the lyrics from one of Eminem's songs. I grew a lot both as a person and as an English speaker then. I'd say it definitely helped approach the language from a new perspective and it most certainly helped me improve the knowledge I already had, even if it was just a quick shot in the arm of knowledge and not something substantial.

[bmcleod19]

I've had a lot of success with this method with French. I love music so hey, it works. 

[shadejb]

I have actually used this method to learn English before. Of course, it's hard not because of the language, but because you have to write AND listen at the same time (which, by the way, helps a lot in university). However, I would suggest anyone starting out to actually use the lyrics first, get used to how certain words are pronounced. If you want a challenge, then maybe blackout some of the words from the lyrics and make it like a homework (actual teaching method here). It will be a while before you can write down Eminem's lyrics for sure though.

[anna3101]

On 06 December 2015, linguaholic said:

What about sharing this song and the lyrics here on linguaholic.com? I am curious now ^^

It's a band called Edlseer and they have a very nice album "Goldene Weihnacht". But the lyrics for any of the songs from it is just not available anywhere

I've started with the song that I like a lot and that seemed easier than the rest - "Ich möchte so gerne noch ans Christkind glauben". I did managed to pin down most of the words but not every single one. If I'm feeling brave, maybe I'll share it in the German subforum and someone will be able to help me with the words I'm not sure about. But only if you promise not to laugh! It's really hard for me as I'm only beginning with German, so there's probably a lot of mistakes.

On the bright side though, I did learn a lot of words and after trying to decipher what they were singing about, I also know the song by heart. It's amazing just how many times you have to listen to something in order to write it down I hope to try with some other songs from the same album, as there's no place on the whole Internet where I can find the lyrics and I absolutely love those songs.

[czarina84]

That's the main method I'm trying to learn Spanish.  It's working very well.  It's a mixture of hearing the words and writing them down that makes it a good learning method.  But there's something about the emotion in the music that boosts its efficacy. 

[takibari]

5 hours ago, czarina84 said:

That's the main method I'm trying to learn Spanish.  It's working very well.  It's a mixture of hearing the words and writing them down that makes it a good learning method.  But there's something about the emotion in the music that boosts its efficacy. 

You're quite right. The emotion that the singer brings out when performing the song helps a lot. Primarily because the emotion provides an immediate and CLEAR context to the meaning of the lyrics. If at first you struggle with the meaning of the lyrics, with the help of the melody and the emotion from the singer, you can readily identify whether the song is a happy song, a sad one, an inspirational bit, or what have you.

[czarina84]

19 hours ago, takibari said:

You're quite right. The emotion that the singer brings out when performing the song helps a lot. Primarily because the emotion provides an immediate and CLEAR context to the meaning of the lyrics. If at first you struggle with the meaning of the lyrics, with the help of the melody and the emotion from the singer, you can readily identify whether the song is a happy song, a sad one, an inspirational bit, or what have you.

The only exception I have heard was El Canoero by Los Super Seven.  The background music is very upbeat but the lyrics translate into things like "the poor canoeist, he died".

[Trellum]

Music I believe was the one thing that awoke my interest in languages, to be more exact German. Back then I was so young and naive, and I thought German was so cool.  Mostly because I was very interested to find out the meaning of several Rammstein songs.  So I started to write down some words, and looked them up in a german-spanish dictionary I bought specially for that.  Needless to say I didn't get too far with it, but I believe this was my first linguistic encounter. Back then I used to see language learning as something almost magical. 

 

[loulou]

I have done this so many times with German and Japanese. It helps because then after I have written it down and translated the lyrics, when I listen to the song again I am subconsciously thinking about the translation for it in my head. Plus it helped my spelling and writing skills, especially for Japanese which I desperately need the help with. It's not an end-all way to completely learn by any means, but I definitely would consider it a learning aid. Plus, who doesn't like some good music? 

[anna3101]

On 11.12.2015, 12:03:17, czarina84 said:

The only exception I have heard was El Canoero by Los Super Seven.  The background music is very upbeat but the lyrics translate into things like "the poor canoeist, he died".

I remember sharing one my favourite French songs  - "Ces matins" - with my colleague. She liked it and asked me to do a word-by-word translation for her. After I did it, she was so shocked. "But how can it be? That music... I was absolutely sure it's a song about happiness and life being beautiful, and not... well.. all THIS depressing stuff!"

So yes, sometimes the tune and even the voice can be misleading. I guess it's what makes a kind of "special" effect - the contrast gets you confused but more attentive to the lyrics at the same time.

[atanas.velikov]

I actually am in love with this italian song and read the lyrics every day and have nearly learnt it off by heart. I have a vague meaning of what it means but I'm so proud of the fact I can say it correctly

[djordje87]

   When I was 10 years old I had no PC since it was 1997 and I lived in Serbia. What I used to do was recording my favourite English songs on radio and then listen to them in order to learn them and take every word on paper. Now I realize it is called a research. I would take my time to listen once, and mind I am talking about cassette players, then, second time I would pause every ten seconds to write down words I know leaving blank spaces for the unknown ones. My research was based on dictionaries and enthusiastic friends who liked English same as me, but mostly dictionaries and me. Once i told my teacher what I do and she was about to help me about a song. She wanted to fill the blanks and solve some mysteries for me at the time. I said no, because for me that was no learning. I couldn't see the fun in it if someone else did it for me. So it turned good for me and my teacher was pleased with my choice of research.

[Nekomimi_mode]

I think it’s really useful to write down the words of the song. They help me commit the words to memory faster. I only have a slight problem with this method, I’m taking Chinese. When someone is singing really fast or rapping in can be hard to catch all the words and even when I do catch them I have to figure out which tone they were using. There are five tones in mandarin Chinese and depending on which tone they used the word can mean completely different things.  I’ve remedied this by simply looking up the lyrics but unlike Japanese songs, there isn’t a website dedicating to translating them to English. So I’ve had to use google translate which completely butchers the meaning. I’ll figure it out one day. 

 

[pesic87]

You are quite right. Writing music lyrics that you hear from bands is a great way to practice your listening skills and comprehension, plus writing, on top of it. Yet, one better not limit himself or herself only with listening to music and writing down the lyrics. I have tried to do that with movies, too. And with Tv shows. So, be creative and touch every single source of the language. It does wonders to learning process.

[Mameha]

This helps even in another way, when i am searching for a song and i don't know its name i digit on google bar the lyrics that i hear and i can find the title easily

Btw actually i didn't try to do this but i know that it's really helpful because this implies that i need to hear the words carefully, so it can make me improve my listening skills

[Cori]

On 12/22/2015, 4:17:45, Nekomimi_mode said:

I think it’s really useful to write down the words of the song. They help me commit the words to memory faster. I only have a slight problem with this method, I’m taking Chinese. When someone is singing really fast or rapping in can be hard to catch all the words and even when I do catch them I have to figure out which tone they were using. There are five tones in mandarin Chinese and depending on which tone they used the word can mean completely different things.  I’ve remedied this by simply looking up the lyrics but unlike Japanese songs, there isn’t a website dedicating to translating them to English. So I’ve had to use google translate which completely butchers the meaning. I’ll figure it out one day. 

 

 

Try this site http://lyricstranslate.com/. They have a lot of songs translated.

Maybe you are lucky and the songs you like are already there  

[Saholy]

I'm very excited to find out about lyrictranslate! I hope it will have some of the languages I want. Yes! I do believe that learning the lyrics to songs is a great learning technique. But just listening to to the song alone is not enough for my ears to pick up the actual words. Often times there are poetic expressions used that have double meanings that I do not understand. This can deepen our understanding of the culture which will in turn help us in forging relationships in our target language! I think this is a great post. Thanks for sharing all of these great ideas. The only thing I have done that might be an addition to the above, is I have used Mediaplayer on my computer to add captions to the music videos I do have the words too. I would like to make more. This has also helped some of my friends who do not have CC who are trying to learn English which is my native language. It is alot of work to translate but it is well worth the effort.