Self-Study Using Japanese Songs (Lyrics)

4 comments

1. I have actually learned half of my vocabulary through song lyrics, and built an enormous playlist in the process. It works but you’ll be looking up kanji every 5 secs.

   Edit: didn’t read the n3 part

2. I still think I only made that huge a progress in Japanese during my year abroad because I was able to spend hours in karaoke every weak xD

   It made me better in pronunciation, trained me to read faster and I spend hours with the language while enjoying myself. You won’t really learn grammar, but it’s worth it for the other benefits in my opinion.

3. Songs really aren’t a great way to learn Japanese. Another poster briefly touched on the heavy use of metaphors and older language, but on top that, the kanji used for a ton of words in songs isn’t necessarily the ones you would use in real life.

   Think about learning English from poetry. Some would be helpful of course, but then you run into ones that have odd phrasing to help them rhyme, use old words like “thou” or even ones that heavily use puns (which Japanese songs do a lot!) and of course as a beginner it would be impossible for you to tell the “Shakespeare” from the “Dickinson.”

4. I would suggest starting with older music for the slower pacing if you go down this route. Ballads will probably be the most useful? It’s 5am in the morning so you’ll have to forgive my incomplete thoughts.

   I have a soft spot for 70- 80s music because it’s what my relatives sang at karaoke so 聖母たちのララバイ, つぐない come to mind, otherwise チェリー (スピーツ) is a song any Japanese person would know, Lovers Again (EXILE) is also pretty slow from the 90s.

   For a bit of a challenge, Playback Part2 might be interesting. Bit dramatic and faster paced