In my experience, listening to songs in a foreign language gives me a rush to learn the language. However, once I get good enough to understand the lyrics just by listening, my focus shifts to the words rather than rhythm and melody.
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I am afraid that I would lose great joy after getting really good at Japanese…
5 comments
I won’t pretend to be even barely competent at Japanese by this point, however there are plenty of songs that I’ve listened to and have enough vocabulary to understand pretty much completely, and no I don’t enjoy them any less.
A banger is a banger.
Lyrics are rarely spoken clearly enough for me to fully grok them even in my native language, but I think that’s a me problem
Anime songs are what inspired me to start learning the language. I listen to a lot of city pop songs and have memorized the romaji lyrics which I have no clue at all what anything means. But after dedicating a full month of learning Japanese I can tell what words mean and recognize some of the kanji.
It might just be the case that you need to learn more Japanese to the point of it feeling like second nature. I assume you enjoy at least some songs in your native language. You understand it on the grounds that you’re used to the language, and yet you probably don’t get less enjoyment specifically because of the understanding, do you?
I’m more or less on that level of “legitimately understanding the language used in songs with zero effort,” and I’d say it has only increased my enjoyment. Sometimes I’ll come across a song that strikes a chord with me even on a first listen and there’s something special about being able to empathize with the lyrics. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with just vining to the tunes either.
I’m prone to analyzing lyrics in any language I can understand, and I get enjoyment out of getting deeper into what the singer is trying to impart to the listener, as well as the reasoning for why they might have said certain things in their lyrics. If Japanese people have speculated about a given set of lyrics online, that’s another rabbit hole to go down.
Finally, I found that while I’ve always been good at imitating the sounds that I hear (>!been singing along to anime songs since before I could get permission to use the computer to look up rōmaji lyric videos lel!<), I can sing with a lot more emotion and conviction now that I can actually understand what’s going on with the lyrics.
When I realized that most Japanese I’d heard where almost all about love, I liked it less.
Then when I started understanding lyrics and realized what they were actually saying (about love), I liked it even less.
Just me but I prefer lyrics that tell a story unrelated to a person’s feelings.