Movies and books can often feel overwhelming, especially if you are at the beginning, because you want to catch every sigle aspect and word of it—but music is different because you can enjoy it without understanding everything or anything at all!
Here's what you can learn from music and how to make your favourite songs your best allies.
Music instantly connects you to culture
Unlike books, which are very well structured and therefore loose sometimes that natural and real colloquial language, music can introduce you to hear the sounds and the slang of today which otherwise you wouldn't be able to catch, but that are commonly used in daily life.
Music can be a relaxed and an easy way to start learning about a place’s culture and history. YouTube is a great place to start doing just that.
Who is the Beyoncé of the language you're interested in? Find out by exploring a community's most influential musicians!
Beyond just being a great tool to help you learning the language, music it can also create a stronger bond between and the language that you want to learn.
I guarantee you’ll have a couple delightful “I didn’t know this existed?!” “Oh! So that's why they say it this way?!” discovery moments.
How to learn from music
There isn't a right or wrong way to learn from music. If you pick up some new words or phrases, that’s great. If you simply just get a little more motivated, it’s worth it! And of course, if you want to use music to dig into the language, there's a lot you can do. Here are some ways that you can use to help me learn.
But remember there is no one way fits all. Just find what best works for you and do just that.
Start with music that you enjoy. Learning with music shouldn’t feel like a burden. Start by listening to the same genres of music you already like—if you think love ballads are boring, don’t listen to them in another language! On Spotify, you can search for a combination of a country that speaks the language you want to learn and the genre to listen to, like “Italian rock.” And if you already know some of the language, you might try some search terms in the language, too. More often than not, people will have already created a playlist for it.
Read the lyrics and about the artist. After finding songs that you like, try to find something about the artist. So that you can also learn about the history and culture of the country and community in ways that you would never have found on your own. As well as creating that connection that will keep you motivated in the moment of discomfort want learning the language. Start by reading the lyrics of the song in your own language, and then take a look at it in the new language, too—it's ok to not understand everything yet, but it can also be fun to start learning more music vocabulary this way!
Don't take note of every single word that you don't know; your brain won't be able to retain all those new information and you'll end up forgetting most of them and feel discouraged. Instead, start memorizing just the word that catches and made an impression on you.
Music is meant to be sung as well. Study it like you would if you were to perform at a karaoke. Listen to the songs with the lyrics in front of you, skip back to catch lyrics you missed, and do this repeatedly. On other words study it like you would if you were to perform at a karaoke until you feel comfortable enough singing along. This joint effort of reading and pronouncing really helps learn a song and commit more of the vocabulary and grammar to memory. This practice also means you will inevitably end up singing to yourself in that language throughout the day!
Make the song part of your music routine. Once you can understand a song well, add it into your usual playlists.
Listening to it again after a break becomes a nice and easy way to reinforce what you have learned. You'll also find that you pick up more nuance later on, during the fifth or tenth listen, like double entendres or deeper meanings.
Creative ways to keep it always interesting!
Music is a great way to familiarize yourself with the language you are learning and the culture of those you'll be communicating with!
For more tip and trick on how to improve your learning language experience check out our posts on DreamOra Blog
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