Since I recently stumbled across the Favorite Japanese music thread and listened to some of the great songs people posted, I noticed that some of them used just exactly the vocabulary and grammar I can understand - or am in the process of learning.
As for me, I especially found this song particularly helpful (and entertaining) in understanding that Japanese has postpositions rather than prepositions: While in English, it’s “inside the futon”, Japanese goes “布団の中”
For most of you, this might be very basic, but I’m happy I found this song to teach me this kind of grammar.
That’s when I started wondering if other people managed to learn grammar patterns or vocabulary through Japanese songs and would like to share their experiences and successes
Please feel free to post what kind of song(s) helped you to learn specific words, grammar etc.
I am eager to see your responses
I usually don’t translate directly while listening, but there have been things I have wondered about and then later learned.
For example, in this track:
It ends with:
ずっと優しく微笑んでいられるように
And I just assumed it was a song ending with an incomplete sentence, which is fine for music (“like being gently smiling continously (and effecting me)”)
But then I later learned that ように at the end can mean “to hope for” and it all made sense. Particularly given the song is literally called hope.
I completely analyzed なんでもないや from Radwimps when I started out with Japanese. And then on millions of repeat listens I kept understanding more and more.
I love that so many songs on Youtube have the lyrics so you don’t have to figure them all out yourself, especially if they are sung quite quickly. Or if you know a phrase or two you can google the lyrics in Japanese.
This is my favourite song at the moment, because I find the lyrics amusing.
e.g.
もしも運命の人がいるのなら
運命の出会いがあるなら
あなたはいったい
どこで寄り道しているのかしら？
Which I think pretty much sums up how I felt when I was single
Aye, that’s how I explain it to people as well - particles always follow the word they modify. People somehow get the understanding that “を comes before a verb”, but no, を follows the direct object, which merely happens to be placed before the verb in most simple sentences.
I don’t think this song is at all meant for learners of Japanese, but it kinda has everything you need - lyrics subtitled on the video, slower and very clear pronunciation that is easy to follow, and visual context through the clips shown so you can fill in some of the words you might not know without having to head to a dictionary.
The band Galileo Galilei has some great music, plus the vocals are very clear and relatively slow. It’s definitely helped me tons, and it’s one of my all time favorite bands. Highly recommend! ロンリーボーイ has very simple lyrics, very basic grammar, very approachable. Also, if you have an iphone, there’s an app called うたマップ which has a lot of lyrics. Great for following along with your favorite songs.
(This was posted on the Art share thread (i think) a bit back, but ive learnt about culture and also about basic na modification (?) and chestnut trees. I also learnt the actions too, but that’s not really relevant)
