# Learning with songs



## Juri

A self-teaching "forero" who asked how to gain a correct Spanish pronounce, got many suggestions on his thread: "Hear to Radio, TV and songs".
This reminded me , how I learned enough French for "turists use" hearing to loved French songs (like "La vie en rose") and how many years ago,there has been a lot of singing in the schools.As little boy, learning German I sung "Dornroeschen ist ein schoenes Kind"; later in English class we sung "London's burning". 
But can't remember the songs , perhaps still in use *in Italian and other schools* .


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## natasha2000

I don't think that listening to the songs would be of a great help in learning one language. On the other hand, seeing TV is different thing, especially the news, because usually the news are read by anchors who speak standard language with standard accent. Unlike the TV news, songs are very often unintelligeble, full of slang and hardly understandable, sometimens even for native speakers. 

I used to listen to the TV news or programmes and to repeat after (maybe the better word would be imitate) the speakers. It helped a lot. But songs... Never.


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## vince

Songs help with vocabulary but here are some caveats:

- Songs may use unconventional grammar in order to make the words flow better. They may use word order that would not be acceptable in speech.
- For English: every is spelled as "ev'ry" in song lyrics to emphasize that it's only two syllables
- For French: the word-final "e" is pronounced in songs but it is not pronounced in speech for most French dialects.
- For Cantonese: songs are written with Mandarin grammar and vocabulary, so unless you are only trying to learn Chinese characters, it is useless to try to learn Cantonese from Cantopop. Because a large portion of characters do not exist in speech, and even if they do, are often not used the same way as in proper Cantonese.


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## Fernita

I strongly believe that songs are very helpful when learning a language.
In fact, the songs have to be *carefully chosen*. And once they are chosen, teachers must prepare activities for the students, such as leaving blanks for them to complete according to what they are listening to. First of all, they listen to the whole song, and the teacher asks a few questions to find out if they got the general meaning of it. 
Songs are also useful to make students relax a bit, that's why I used to devote the last 15 minutes of the class to a song but not every single class, of course.
I've used songs by Queen (Let me live, and many others) and by The Beatles (When I'm 64, for example) for teenagers and they learnt a lot.
Personally, I started learning French by listening to Aznavour at the age of 10.


Fernita


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## Cereth

natasha2000 said:
			
		

> I don't think that listening to the songs would be of a great help in learning one language. On the other hand, seeing TV is different thing, especially the news, because usually the news are read by anchors who speak standard language with standard accent. Unlike the TV news, songs are very often unintelligeble, full of slang and hardly understandable, sometimens even for native speakers.
> 
> I used to listen to the TV news or programmes and to repeat after (maybe the better word would be imitate) the speakers. It helped a lot. But songs... Never.


 
Funny I learned most of my english by the method of listening and translating songs, I´ve never studied in an english language school.

I find learning with songs a very suitable way to learn...and i´m using this method now for learning japanese 
so i think it is a strongly recommended method.


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## Vanda

When I was living in small towns - those old times without internet, no cable TV  - I kept my English going with songs. You can learn a lot of vocabulary and also pronunciation with songs. The Carpenters, Diana Ross, Dionne Warwick, Beatles, just to mention some, were part of my "songbook" and I can tell you, words you learn this way are NEVER forgotten.


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## Grekh

I've also learned most of my english through songs! I think it's a perfect method to learn languages. I'm actually studying french and italian the same way!


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## maxiogee

natasha2000 said:
			
		

> I don't think that listening to the songs would be of a great help in learning one language.



I can only agree.
Come and visit the English Only forum and see the number of inquiries which are posted asking "what does X mean in the song ABCD when the lyrics are blah, blah blah." Or if the phrase "blah, blah, blah" is standard usage. Some of the inquiries start earnest debate among native speakers who find the phrases difficult —> what must a learner think?


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## cubaMania

Well of course it wouldn't be a good idea to choose the types of songs that massacre the language (raggaeton, hip-hop, etc.)  But there is other music available that has excellent lyrics.  I have learned much Spanish from Cuban music.  Phrases stick in memory when they are associated with a catchy tune.


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## mytwolangs

Yes, as said, if the songs and artist are carefully chosen.
I sometimes wonder if PAtricia Kaas is a good way to try to better understand French. She seems to articulate well. Any opinions, French speakers?

AND - For those wanting to better understand English, DON'T use Rap songs as a basis for hearing the language, because rap is unintelligible at best.


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## bianconera

I think it is a good idea because in many songs there is rhythm and same endings such as sneak ... peek.  This can facilitate pronunciation.


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## jimreilly

mytwolangs said:
			
		

> Yes, as said, if the songs and artist are carefully chosen.
> I sometimes wonder if....
> 
> AND - For those wanting to better understand English, DON'T use Rap songs as a basis for hearing the language, because rap is unintelligible at best.



Two comments:

Pet peeve: rap may be unintelligible to you and to me (for the most part) but it is not unintelligible to everyone. I used to tutor a teenager who could "translate" it for me. He certainly understood it. In fact, his skill in translating it was one of the first things that tipped me off to the fact that he really did have a good aptitude for language. ALL of us are both expanded and limited by our experiences and culture...and us "educated" folks ought to remember that with a little humility.

Second: Not everyone learns the same way. For some students listening to and singing songs will be an excellent way to help learn a language. For other students it will be torture. A good language teacher will use a great variety of means to reach everyone in the class eventually, if not everyone at the same time.

And if the student of a language learns some slang and unconventional grammar through songs, perhaps that student will not be so easily flustered when he/she meets  some real people who speak "unconventionally". I wish I knew more unconventional French...


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## CrazyIvan

I would say, songs in my language learning process, serve a funtiion of motivation.

Songs come into my learning of language after I have some basic knowledge of that language. And it always touch me with the expression hidden in the lyrics, which give me stronger feeling about that language. With that feeling, I progress better, or I should say, comprehend better in reading. Further on the reading helps the listening, and so on and so on.

I would say language is a "vivid" tool. I would suggest people to learn  a language through daily application. And of course, song is part of our life.


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## bianconera

well said C. Ivan


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## THE SPANINGLISH

the songs are perfect for the english and one proof is that I learned first the english alphabet when my kinder teachers singed with us"A B C D E F G......" The songs have helped me a lot in the pronunciation I recomend you the keane songs are really easy to undestand. Seeing the picture without subtitules (and If you can't undestand, then put the subtitles in english) or whatching BBC in english or CNN in english is very helpfull.
Maybe having chat speakers native english friends to practice your english,(but take carefull , this is not always save, you can be cheat).
Write in forums and things like those.

And one more think I don't know why the english schools )most of them) don't teach the comun words(gotcha, gonna, wanna) or the rude words. It's part of the english, each person have to decide if they use them or not.



			
				Grekh said:
			
		

> I've also learned most of my english through songs! I think it's a perfect method to learn languages. I'm actually studying french and italian the same way!


 
ohh me too! but I'm just learning with dictionaries.
I'm deciding what leanguage to learn seriously I mean witha teacher but both are good.



			
				Vanda said:
			
		

> When I was living in small towns - those old times without internet, no cable TV  - I kept my English going with songs. You can learn a lot of vocabulary and also pronunciation with songs. The Carpenters, Diana Ross, Dionne Warwick, Beatles, just to mention some, were part of my "songbook" and I can tell you, words you learn this way are NEVER forgotten.


 
This used to be in always in my discman yeahh me too I recomend it The carpenters and Diana Ross are really good. And it's good because you can got the meaning of a word with the context


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## mytwolangs

jimreilly said:
			
		

> Two comments:
> 
> Pet peeve: rap may be unintelligible to you and to me (for the most part) but it is not unintelligible to everyone....
> 
> ...And if the student of a language learns some slang and unconventional grammar through songs, perhaps that student will not be so easily flustered when he/she meets some real people who speak "unconventionally". I wish I knew more unconventional French...


 
It may sound like a good idea, but would you really want to butcher French the same way the hip hop culture butchers our language? 

When you hear someone speaking in such a way - "man, y'all's gotsta be gettin da "f" on up outta here...You's be..." 
Do you really WANT to hear this, do you really care what they are trying to say? 
Be it politically correct or not, when someone hears another person speaking like they have speech problems, he teands to assume things about their intelligence.


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## modus.irrealis

I think songs can be a good learning resource, if it's done properly. Maybe it's language dependent too. Like others have said, I wouldn't advise people to learn English from music (at least not the music I listen to it) because it's very colloquial, especially in vocabulary. The other problem is that if you look up the lyrics, they'll rarely be written in the standard way. But on the other hand, I've picked up a bunch of words listening to Greek music, words which are acceptable in higher registers, and it's a fun way to pick up words, at least compared to looking up words that you come across in a newspaper article but don't know. And I find I memorize words I hear in songs much more easily too.



			
				mytwolangs said:
			
		

> when someone hears another person speaking like they have speech problems


I don't think I'll ever understand this attitude. Do you have a speech "problem" because you don't speak like Shakespeare? Did he have a speech "problem" because he didn't speak like Chaucer? Did he have a "problem" because he didn't speak like Alfred the Great? Why is it a speech "problem" and not just a different way of speaking?


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## Etcetera

If I like some song in English, I usually try to find its text on the Net or wherever. Then I read it, paying a lot of attention to the pronunciation. I can even write a transcription of the whole song. 
And then I start to sing it. 
Honestly, it helps.


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## Juri

Going back in time(some decades), introducing in Radio the first trasmission in contact with listeneres, I had to listen to each new disc in English and French,at least ten times, to catch sense, words and translate it for the listeners.
Today the Net permits to hurry-scurry just in all!


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## Vanda

Juri said:
			
		

> Going back in time(some decades), introducing in Radio the first trasmission in contact with listeneres, I had to listen to each new disc in English and French,at least ten times, to catch sense, words and translate it for the listeners.
> Today the Net permits to hurry-scurry just in all!


 
lol. That's precisely what I used to do when I was a teenager: listening to discs, ten times, or to the radios. American songs were popping out on radios so they used to play them, let's say, ten times a day. I had a notebook and a pencil close to the radio, and there I went , till I could write all the lyrics. Salve the internet!  
On the other hand, that helped me a lot with listening, at least songs, and vocabulary, cause then I had to look up the words. No WR forum, no internet, no cable TV to help.


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## jimreilly

mytwolangs said:
			
		

> It may sound like a good idea, but would you really want to butcher French the same way the hip hop culture butchers our language?
> 
> When you hear someone speaking in such a way - "man, y'all's gotsta be gettin da "f" on up outta here...You's be..."
> Do you really WANT to hear this, do you really care what they are trying to say?
> Be it politically correct or not, when someone hears another person speaking like they have speech problems, he teands to assume things about their intelligence.



I'm sorry we are off the topic here, and I will answer you more fully in a private message, and will not continue this discussion here beyond this message. Or if the moderator cares to separate this off into a new thread, please do so.


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## Juri

I had a casual meeting today with the link of "Cambridge Copy Collection".
They issued a "Singing grammar" for classroom use - with cassettes!


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## arugunu

I agree that to some extent listening music in the language you want to learn might help, but i think it's confusing, because of the poetic and metaphoric - and sometimes non-sense - contents of the lyrics.
But films do very good when learning a foreign language. I've learned so much from films, especially the colloquial expressions - and the phrasings for sure.


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## pcplus

I think there's a good method to learning English in my case with the music. You take an music album, you get the full lyrics from all the songs in it, and then, you listen to a couple of times reading all the lines.
Next you translate it to your native language, in this way

Moderator note: link deleted. This is a copyright violation. 

 now you listen to and read to at the same time, as much times as you need

but there's need to be carefully to choose well the albums to learn to. For example, many musicians all the time are saying: love, darling, baby, I love you, I want you, I can't stop thinking of you, you're that I want and I need you now... (this can be helpful in the beginning, it is)

Neither with the hip hop is the proper: I'm a buy the bread (I'm gonna buy the bread), too much incorrect sentences, and too much slang, but in other way, this could help because they are not singing, but rapping, talking, and with a fast rythm as the conversation. But be carefull with any swear, curse words.

I think it's very good learning with bands and singers with a large vocabulary and topics whose they sing along about.
Love, boys and girls, relationships, friends, jokes, society...


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## Namakemono

In my opinion, you can learn a language much faster watching subtitled TV shows and films. Also songs don't really help with intonation, which is one of the most important aspects of a conversation.


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## Chaska Ñawi

In my experience, songs are extremely important in language learning...... but it works best if you sing along and it's even better if you have a dance to go with the music.  

You can watch all the subtitled shows you like, but unless you have the script and do it over and over again, this isn't nearly as effective as learning a set of songs.  The combination of repetition, musical accompaniment and your voice all stimulate different routes to different storage areas for your memory.  You are embedding the knowledge much faster; and because you're using different storage paths, you can "withdraw" the knowledge in a variety of contexts.  I have also had students dance to music while they sang: they embedded the knowledge visually, kinesthetically, acoustically and orally.  Sometimes you could see them singing under their breath or dancing very slightly in their seats as they tried to remember "je suis, tu es".

I don't retain many new expressions from watching a film or listening to radio; eventually I retain material if I see it every day in print; and I never ever forget phrases, idioms or vocabulary I learn in a song.


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## pcplus

Chaska Ñawi said:


> In my experience, songs are extremely important in language learning...... but it works best if you sing along and it's even better if you have a dance to go with the music.
> 
> You can watch all the subtitled shows you like, but unless you have the script and do it over and over again, this isn't nearly as effective as learning a set of songs. The combination of repetition, musical accompaniment and your voice all stimulate different routes to different storage areas for your memory. You are embedding the knowledge much faster; and because you're using different storage paths, you can "withdraw" the knowledge in a variety of contexts. I have also had students dance to music while they sang: they embedded the knowledge visually, kinesthetically, acoustically and orally. Sometimes you could see them singing under their breath or dancing very slightly in their seats as they tried to remember "je suis, tu es".
> 
> I don't retain many new expressions from watching a film or listening to radio; eventually I retain material if I see it every day in print; and I never ever forget phrases, idioms or vocabulary I learn in a song.


as I see, there are so differents points of view... I have written below in the other topics the better ways to learn with the TV.
In the songs there are advantages and disadvantages, you also have to know, 99% music in English is rather American English. Yes it's so, although the singers and bands are British. It's more commercial and the entonation is as well softer than the English spoken, with much accent and stress. So I am used to be rather into the American English.
But maybe the pronunciations from time to time aren't just right, as when there are people saying exagerates words: babee, rather men for man, etc


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## Lusitania

Namakemono said:


> In my opinion, you can learn a language much faster watching subtitled TV shows and films. Also songs don't really help with intonation, which is one of the most important aspects of a conversation.


 

I fully agree, I guess that one of the reasons why in Portugal people easily understand other languages. There is more exposure to the language.

I learnt a lot of French and English by listening my parents music when I was a child. I remeber that my cousins came from France and the U.S and I would fully understand them at the age of 10. With Spanish is the same, we had the same tv shows that spanish kids had.

I met a guy at the gym that says that he learnt Italian through Eros Ramazotti music.


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## kanojo_

The only way I can learn basic Japanese words is with songs. I cannot expand my vocabulary knowledge by reading as 1.) I do not know enough words to actually start reading 2.) Reading in Japanese is not the same as reading in English. The written system is very complex and when you come across a new word (kanji) you do not even know how to pronounce it properly, unless you're really familiar with them or unless the kanji has the furigana (a phonetic prononciation) above it. Children books would be the only other solution as every written kanji has furigana, but they still require some grammar knowledge.


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## PianoMan

I thought it was quite interesting that this discussion was occuring because if there's one thing that added to my German it was listening to bands such as Rammstein and Wir Sind Helden and looking up their lyrics.


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## rodoke

Etcetera said:


> If I like some song in English, I usually try to find its text on the Net or wherever. Then I read it, paying a lot of attention to the pronunciation. I can even write a transcription of the whole song.
> And then I start to sing it.
> Honestly, it helps.



I couldn't agree more.  Back in my more otaku-ish days, I listened to a lot of Japanese music and shows.  I never made any concerted attempt to learn the language, it was all passive exposure.  As a result, over the years my ears have become 'tuned' to Japanese speech.  Even despite the fact that I can't understand 99.99% the content, I can parse Japanese conversation perfectly.  Strangely enough, I've also become very good at understanding Japanese-accented English


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## Slateblue

Hello everybody,

what a nice subject for a first-time post. 

I find that for me, music may not be the best way to really learn a language (because of the already mentioned dialect or slang problems), but it's a great way of reinforcing my motivation to learn. When I was in Italy last summer, I discovered some Italian music that I immediately fell in love with, and this actually caused me to spend more time studying the Italian language, watch Italian TV, surf Italian websites and so on. I just wanted to understand the lyrics better. At the beginning, I didn't understand a single word (well, maybe one here and there, but it didn't make any sense to me). Now, after about 9 months, I can hear an Italian song for the first time and I'm able to make out proper lines or stanzas. So that's how I realise I've actually improved my Italian.


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## Mei

Hi all there:

Learning with songs? I can say I did it. 

I think that listening to a song while you're reading the lyrics it is so useful. I'm not saying that it is the perfect way to learn but it helps a lot. 

From my experience songs helped me so much to learn English ( I used to listent to a song with the lyrics in English and comparing it with the ones in spanish). I've been more than 10 years listening to the same artist, reading her lyrics, listening to her voice and understanding what she was saying.  Maybe you're right saying that it is not useful because I don't understand people from England very well BUT I can talk with people from the States, I can understand them so well (Not all of them, of course) and I just did 3 years of English in school. If it weren't for the music I wouldn't be here right now and I would lost many important things that happened in my life.

Don't say it is not useful, just say that it helps. 

Cheers 

Mei


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## ayaram7700

Hello everybody,

I find songs very useful when learning another language; personally I studied English at Universidad de Chile in the sixties and we used lots of The Beatles' songs to practice. Besides being lots of fun because they were SO fashionable, their English was so good. Our professor, Mr. Lasch would let us use his own records and sing and repeat until we knew the song by heart (I still can sing  many of them). 

I strongly recommend songs to any learner of any language.

Bye,

Ayaram7700


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