My iTunes Library with japanese, english and french music
Great, I have made smart playlists on iTunes for song on Spanish, English, Japanese and French to have them a little apart. At first, let me tell you, if you don’t know, I speak Spanish as my native language, so Spanish is not, at all, an unknown language. Yet I find listening to music in Spanish very different from English songs, and even more from japanese.
Now, I understand english very well (at least that’s what people keeps telling me… Hey, I write here in English right?) so listening to english music is somehow like listening to spanish music. The thing is that English keeps being a foreign language that even has different roots; Spanish comes from latin, while English comes from Germanic. And even when several words are really similar from each language, most are not, and sentences structure is different, so listening to the songs, even when you understand them, is different, as “deciphering” English is different from deciphering Spanish (besides, I said I understand english well, but not completely, as spoken english is one thing and sung english is another).
But Japanese is something apart. I can understand, at least whole parts of an english songs; japanese songs are just incomprehensible to me. I watch anime and I could tell you a couple of words that they repeat a lot (others than arigato,and name titles like -sama, -san, -chan, and so on) but I just haven’t learned about anything else, like sentences structures (well, I know that no and ni mixes adjectives/adverbs with nouns…) but no, you know, you can’t understand a language with a word repository of 10 words maximum.
What I like of this? Not understanding makes your ears eager, like they need to figure out the words; at first separate them, or even separating syllables. So, while listening to japanese music, I kind of think clearer, and I don’t really know why, exactly.
Of course, anime openings are a vivid memory of childhood good memories, and maybe that have some effect on me. Or perhaps it doesn’t, and I’m just not thinking clear for this matter.
The thing is, that I want to encourage you to do so. Maybe not japanese music, as some people don’t like it. But perhaps you like more celtic music, french pop, indian music, I don’t know, just choose a weird language and look for its music.
