Does music help us learn langauges?

Using songs as a learning tool can be surprisingly effective when studying a foreign language.

One of the first steps to learning a language is working out where one word ends and the next one begins. Since fluent speakers don't generally pause between words, it can be a daunting task. One of the ways people do this is by focusing in on consonant sounds.

Other researchers have found that we also focus on the statistical properties of language.
Certain syllables are likely to follow each other within individual words, but unlikely to follow each other between words. Take the phrase "between words." In English, within a single word we're much more likely to hear bet followed by ween than ween followed by wor.

Researchers have long suspected that singing words might improve listeners' ability to parse them. After all, mothers often sing to their infants. Perhaps one purpose of singing is to help children learn language faster.

For adult learners, memorizing songs in a target language helps us understand the 'rhythm' of the language and can help in improve pronunciation. Listening to songs can help langauge learners 'seperate words' and get a better 'feel' for their target language.

There is also the argument that learning songs helps when you study a language, as you tend to repeat the songs over and over to yourself. This in turn means you are repeating vocabulary and phrases over and over in your target language and absorbing language in a much more natural way than you would from grammar drills.

Most of all learning songs is fun and helps us feel part of our target language's culture.





Romania's multilingual song Liubi Liubi (I love you) by Todomondo for the 2007 Eurovision was sung in English, Romanian, French, Spanish, Italian and Russian!