How I use music to learn languages | tips and step-by-step process

Hi friends! Today I'm talking about why I think music is a great resource for learning languages, and how music has helped me learn English, Italian, Spanish and other languages.

🎶 My playlists in different languages:

✅ TIME STAMPS:
0:00 intro
0:59 music and reading speed
2:21 music and memorization
2:49 music and grammar
3:59 music and spaced repetition
5:19 is studying with music a waste of time
8:57 does music teach you 'incorrect' language
11:22 how I learn languages through song lyrics

💜 MY FAVORITE APPS AND WEBSITES:

✨ LINKS

💜 ABOUT ME:
Hi and welcome! I'm Tanya and the only thing I like more than learning languages is probably talking about learning languages (well, that and hoarding language books).
My native language is Russian and I'm currently in different stages of learning Greek, English, Spanish, Polish, Italian, Korean, and Japanese.

[bzylarisa]

In my opinion, music is crucial when you really want to learn your target language. Music is a part of culture, learning language is learning its culture. Yes, you could be fluent without paying any attention to music, but in that case I think you would be missing some important part of "learning language" which is to learn their culture. If you were living in a country of your target language, you would learn some songs automatically, like it or not, because it's part of the local life. You would get to know famous local singers that everyone knows of as well. So, for me, learning language involves learning music, and it's pretty natural for me. Songs have a lot of repetitions that improves vocabulary memorization, listening skills and pronunciations. By the way "Ojala Pudiera Borrarte" de Maná is also a good song to learn our favorite subjunctive🤣I highly recommend it!

[krishnanclips]

At school, in the eighth grade, a language teacher made us sing one poem. Nearly 55 years later, I still remember the poem! Music is perhaps the best way to remember sentences, but it may not be suited to everyone's style.

[langdinish]

I personally don't tend to look up lyrics, or even sing along (maybe in the car), but I find listening to it does help me with motivation to learn the language ("wow this language has stuff I like THIS much and THIS cool, I want to learn more about it and its culture") or even just get a better feel for the pronunciations, intonation and language sounds, which sometimes seem a bit hard to get used to as a beginner

[GwynneM]

I'm learning Mandarin, and using music as one of my learning methods. I really enjoy Mandopop. It is quite flexible in the tones, but it is very helpful for practicing reading along and learning new characters and words. I pick one song at a time to slowly work through translating it, and learning it until I can sing it karaoke-style before moving to another.

[szilagyimiklos]

Thank you for speaking my mind and validating my opinions

[WanderwithJon]

Despite not revising them, I like writing notes in that it helps me memorize stuff easier. It's a complete waste of tangible resource, but it helps a lot with my learning.

[graygreysangui]

I saw a Tumblr post many years ago that gained the general consensus that music from the 50s&60s across all languages was the best source. They are usually around 3min or less, they repeated a chorus, the beat was slow enough, and words were clearer than music today. It surprised me to see your video and how you found people found music useless. Unless you could buy Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur, music was the audio input you could get when I was a teen (and anime was on YouTube in three separate videos per episode.)

[jessplansandwrites]

I agree, learning languages with music is greatly motivating. I must say I learned a lot of advanced English vocabulary just from listening to Epica, one of my favourite metal bands (they’re Dutch—and kinda infamous for words and album titles that are hard to understand without a dictionary. A taste: Their second album is called “Consign to Oblivion”. Still looking for metal band recommendations who sing in Spanish… x) ) Generally speaking, I’d disagree that you could learn faulty language from music (with some exceptions—thinking of Tarja’s mispronunciation of “swords” in the Nightwish song “Elvenpath”). Most of the time, you’re learning slang, which isn’t wrong but just a different register of language. (Still—Bon Jovi’s “Misunderstood”—“I should have drove all night…”—makes me shudder! 😂) (I studied Eng Lang & Lit, btw.)

[basewho]

I saw someone say that music is spaced repetition. You listen to songs that you like often enough, you'll remember the words and it'll help you recall the meanings because you're getting cued to think of those words often

[shutterchick]

Learning a language using music is fun. I learned some Esperanto with "ni estas fortaj" by Jonny M, and some Spanish from "subeme la radio" by Enrique Iglesias. It's a good way to learn phrases and casual expressions, as well as becoming comfortable with the sounds of the language and pronunciation.

[langdinish]

(the already dissected songs playlist is a really great ideia btw! I've been too lazy to make playlists for my TLs, because I've listened to too many discographies and artists already, but if I do it by song, and then use it as a way to "review" [even if passively] sounds like it could work!)

[noemie.blchrd]

Hi ! Such a great video, I highly appreciate it ! Also, as a fellow learner of a tonal language, thai, music actually helped me a lot ! I guess it depends on the songs, some probably ignore the tones. But for thai I found some songs that were emphasising tones a lot, and it actually helped me to hear the differences between different tones!
The first time I could understand the difference between ไม่ and ไหม was thanks to these two songs: ไม่เข้าใจ by นูโว and อย่ารักเขาได้ไหม by Dome
And now I'm so proud of me when these songs get played in my playlist, cause it makes me remember the baby thai I was learning in the beginning ! I've come such a long way since then, It always gives good motivation and feeling of acomplishment too !

[amsterdamtony]

Thanks for the video Tanya. You are an inspiration

[shay]

Actually, music is partially a reason why I started learning a foreign language - Korean. Through kpop I began taking interest in other parts of Korean culture and a couple of years later decided to learn Korean. I am only a beginner now, but I am super excited. I look forward to the time when I will be pretty fluent and will be able to understand Korean content without subtitles - shows, movies, news, etc. :) However, sometimes I am self-conscious about it, because many people have a negative perception of kpop fans and think that if kpop inspired us to study the language and learn more about the culture, then we are koreaboos... I can't hear anyone say anything like that about people who are fascinated with French music and culture, Spanish, etc. But with Asian languages and culture it happens so often, sadly... So I always hesitate why people ask me why I started learning Korean, and I don't know whether I should be ashamed or not

[fatimahaljawi]

I kept reading through the comment section, and I am really envious of how engaging and helping your audience is. cannot thank you enough

[zenbrandon]

When I was taking Spanish 2 in college, my teacher showed us a song called "Así soy yo" by El Cuarteto de Nos. It was a great song, and I quickly devoured all their music afterwards. It was definitely a huge help in that class and beyond for my Spanish comprehension!

[fridamariemrk]

At school in french lessons we would listen to a lot of songs and also my teacher would make different rhymes for different sentences that we where learning. It did help a lot as the songs would stick without really trying as much so it was a way to get a bit more easy learning combined with all the other boring stuff.

[Christina-xlrp]

I really like watching your videos. Your videos inspire me to move forward with my language learning, when I lack motivation. By the way, your English is really great! I am learning Englisch right now and listening to how you speak Englisch motivates me to work more on my English. It would be interesting to watch a video about how did you learn English. Thank you very much for your effort and inspiration!:)

[yuulfuji]

1:57
omg, im so happy to hear about this! i’ve been doing this with japanese for about a year or so now, finding karaoke’s in jp for my fav songs (which are all japanese lol!) on yt and singing them constantly. literally just before i started watching this i was singing some of the karaoke’s i have saved to a playlist lol. its really helpful as a recourse, i can definitely tell my reading speed has improved quite a bit.

[natalierivera]

What you said about music lyrics not being realistic to real life is so interesting because I’m Puerto Rican and I feel like Spanish music (especially reggaetón) is exactly how we speak in real life because of the slang and stuff. Or at least for PR in regards to reggaetón bc every Spanish country is different. Slang in PR could have a VERY different meaning in a different country. Example: bicho in PR Means bit*ch but in Cuba it means bug 😂😂 I would say music that’s not heavily slanged is better like Mexican music, bachata, salsa, etc. These are more classic songs.