Learn Languages with Music

Music is the soul of culture. That sounds like a plausible thing to say, right? Well, of course, it is just as true to say that food is the soul of culture, or dance, or language itself. When people come together to share in a common life, culture happens, and all of its expressions are equally soulful. 

But music is notable among these expressions in that it sounds really nice. It sounds so nice, in fact, that you’d happily listen to it even if you didn’t understand anything. But wouldn’t it be better if you did understand?

One of the first things I do when learning a new language is find music I like in the target language, and start listening to it regularly.

If you’re listening to music anyway, for perhaps an hour or more every day, then you may as well use that time to get some more immersion.

Language learning is full of these little “freebies.” You’d be surprised how much learning you can get in without changing your routine at all.

How to actually learn languages with music: a step-by step guide

Now, if you’re anything like me, eventually you’re going to want to sing along to your new favourite songs. And you’ll have a lot more fun doing so if you know what the lyrics mean.

That’s why I like to put the song into LingQ, where I can simply click on each word to see its meaning, and really get to know the whole song, line by line. Now, every time I listen to it, I will know what is being sung—and this will supercharge my retention of the new words and phrases. 

Short lessons like this are great in LingQ, because you can sit down and do the whole thing, and really get familiar with the material, without being overwhelmed.

We’re working on a way to enable you to import songs directly from Spotify into LingQ. But until then, you have to use the following method, which luckily is also super easy. Bear with me for a minute or two and you will be duly launched into a galaxy of melody and verse! 

Step 1

Start with the easiest part: pick a song. Don’t worry, you can do as many as you want. But pick one to start with. I’m going with “Metamorfose Ambulante,” by Raul Seixas—a giant of Brazilian rock.

Find the song on YouTube by searching for it. 

Step 2

Ordinarily, you would just use the LingQ Importer (available for Chrome, Safari, Edge and Firefox) to get a YouTube video into LingQ. But songs typically don’t have built-in subtitles, which LingQ requires. Therefore, let’s copy the URL for the video and navigate to LingQ, where we’ll press the “Import” button in the top right corner. Then select “Lesson” from the dropdown menu.

We enter into the importer menu, which looks like this: 

In the sidebar on the left, press + next to “Video” and paste in the URL from the YouTube video. I like doing the same for “original URL” as well, for good measure. 

Step 3

Next, you’re going to Google the song’s lyrics and copy-paste those into the “Input text” box, like so:

Step 4

Then just give the lesson a title (I recommend the name of the song) and you’re good to go! Press “Save and generate lesson” in the top right corner.

Now enjoy your lesson and your song! I’ve been listening to this one for some time, so I know all the words by heart. Before long, you will be in the same position with your favourite songs in your own target language. Learn languages with music on LingQ today!