How effective is listening to Japanese music?

10 comments

1. The most useful thing I got out of music was honing the ability to interpret information as it comes. Ballads are very useful for this on the grounds that both the musical and linguistic phrasings tend to state long ideas broken down into smaller digestible parts that make sense rather than dumping a bunch of info on you all at once.

   The actual vocab and grammar you can gain from songs can range from questionable to impractical, but thanks to that whole information intake practice I described, [most of these songs](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBfUpSa74L5Br6iu2U_hG47bpjCWWcCXW) were actually my gateway into comprehensible native input.

2. I think this depends a lot on how you respond to music in your native language. The voice registers as an instrument to me, so I can go years enjoying a song in English without really knowing the words. Then of course, there’s the fact that most lyrics are poetry, so they don’t necessarily reflect any natural language that’s going to be repeated to be reinforced.

   It requires a concerted effort for most. You’ll want to sit down with the lyrics. But like with anything, the best method is always the one you’ll use. If you’re interested in music, and this method is exciting to you, then it’ll work. If the method is for you, then there’s no need to worry about efficiency or anyone else’s purported reported efficacy. Just go for it, and enjoy yourself.

3. Half of the music even japanese people don’t know the lyrics of many popular artists. Just like English speakers misinterpreting indie or grunge rock music.

   I remember an old interview from someone in Japan in the 2000s saying she learned Japanese from listening to mainstream and tradition music. Then the songs she quoted were things you’d have to look up the lyrics and song interpretations to understand.

   Kids music may be your best doorway. The old kids songs are all pretty heavy in common vocabulary and concepts.

   Music definitely won’t be your path to grammar though. Not just by listening to them without dissecting the songs.

   Modern music can be a good resource for mining words or shortened grammar for your personal pile. They tend to include some newer slang or shortened sentence structures which can be fun to delve into.

   You’re much better off listening to interviews or podcasts.

4. I sort of started out with music. I would listen to the songs that I liked and try to write out the words as best I could. Then I would look up the actual romanized words to see how close I was. I would then look up the meaning of the words in hopes of improving my vocabulary, but as it turns out, people don’t talk like lyrics in music. Go figure! Furthermore, many of the words used in Japanese songs aren’t used in day-to-day conversations. My wife is Japanese and I was showing her my vocabulary list and she just laughed at me, showing me how few words were actually useful. It was from that point that I realized that I needed structure in my learning and to focus on grammar, vocabulary, listening, reading, writing, and ultimately speaking.

   In short, music is a fun way to improve your listening and Karoke skills, but it isn’t a great way to learn conversational/practical Japanese.

5. Leading up to me actually taking lessons, I was a huge j-pop fan, and would use my pocket dictionary to look up words I would hear over and over. It helped me to pick up a lot of vocab very easily early on and put me ahead of my classmates.

6. If you enjoy Japanese music, there’s no harm in listening to it, but I don’t think you should be relying on just listening to Japanese music as a way to learn Japanese because unlike other forms of media (like anime, tv, manga, books, etc) music has pretty much as close to 0 “language learning” as possible. Also [I don’t recommend spending too much time as a beginner studying song lyrics either](https://morg.systems/Learning-Japanese-by-studying-song-lyrics) (I know it’s a common topic)

7. Close to 0 effectiveness.
   You listen to a song you just vibe to the melody and the rythm.
   When listening to a song in your native language you could miss hear some lirycs, imagine that in a foreign language.
   Also singers change the pronunciation of some words to meke them match with the rythm.

   Even if you listen hundred of hours of japanese music i dont think you will go anywhere.

8. Use this Youtube Channel:

   https://youtu.be/Uu9hNzPgwzQ

9. It’s certainly more input. Is it at a level where it is easy for you to understand, making it useful as a study tool? I doubt it. I’d follow the same rules as something like a graded reader. If I could understand 80% of the content without a dictionary it would have some merit.

10. I also listen to a lot of Japanese music, and I mean a lot, but I’d say its language acquisition ability is limited by a lot of different factors .

    First of all, the way in people speak and the way in which they sing is often very different; you’ll sometimes find expressions and sentence structures that are very uncommon or nonexistent in real speech . One specific example I can think of is the -te form being used much more commonly than normal and in ways in which other forms would probably be better; it’s just very poetic sounding.

    Secondly, and this is probably more of a personal issue, I find that I get lost in the music itself rather than the meaning of the lyrics. I’ll often get suddenly reminded that I’m actually listening to Japanese and my ears sort of shift back to “language acquisition” mode but I eventually relax back into “music listening” mode and the words are more important in their melodic quality rather than their meaning.

    Finally, and this is kind of a minor issue, pitch accent can often get influenced by music. Since it is not respected at all for songs I sometimes find myself pronouncing some words with the pitch of a song I’ve heard that word often in. One specific example is 去年 which should be pronounced KYO-nen but since a song I really like and listen often pronounces it kyo-NEN I sometimes pronounce it that way

    This all said music is still a viable acquisition method, I just find it less effective than others so I wouldn’t go out if my way to specifically do it for that alone. If you do intend to listen to music in general then doing it in japanese can only be helpful, especially if you take the lyrics of a song and sentence mine it and translate it yourself and then everytime you’ll listen back to it everything will stick better in your memory