Music - A Good Way To Learn Italian

Nursery rhymes and catchy tunes are a good way of learning a language, I absolutely agree with you. It doesn't really matter whether the songs are cheesy or not, all that matters is learning - if you can learn something from them, then so be it. When it comes to Andrea Boccelli, I really love his version of Time to Say Goodbye (with Sarah Brightman - her voice is simply magical and fairy tale-like). If nothing, you can pick up some words and phrases in Italian while listening to it.

I've also mentioned Emma Chapplin. She's French, true, but she also sings in Italian. It's quite popular nowadays, actually, just like it had been in the past, as after all, Italian is the language of opera.
 
I love this song:
(L'Americano), but I cannot sing it. XD And I don't understand the lyrics too much, so it would not be the best song to learn the language, no matter how much I like it. And Bella Ciao, easier to understand (I like Marco Calliari's Mia Dolce Vita version, and album:
)

AND Adriano Celentano! :)

I'll check out Emma Chapplin. I did not know her -- I'm not too knowledgeable in opera. But it is a good idea to discover it along with Italian culture, might as well and all!
 
I actually started talking to an Italian boy, and I really want to be able to understand and relate to him much more. So thanks for the advice on listening to the music. I really think that it will help in getting to understand all that he is saying, and relate to his culture a lot better.
 
I speak several languages and I found listening to music helped me reinforce and pick up on a lot more. It is also a pleasurable activity, so you learn while you enjoy yourself and more than likely you can be doing something else while you listen to music as well.
 
We had in elementary school half of the year in English, half in French, to learn English. We had every Wednesday a "CD period", where everyone brought a CD of their favorite music in English. Very fun, and allows you to hear many different songs!

I particularly like to watch the music vids on Youtube that are made karaoke style. That way, you can read the lyrics as you listen to the song and, hopefully, sing along and learn it!
 
Emma Chapplin is French coloratura soprano, but she doesn't sing in the classical genre (I do believe this is a shame, she can make the music so alive...). She sings in hard rock genre and sometimes different ones, but her songs are mostly about Celtic mythology, which is why I like her so much. After all, I am a great mythology fan.
 
I feel that there aren't much better ways to learn a language than through music, I can see the example of my kids, they are listening to the radio all the time and they pick up the sororities of the foreign languages.
 
Yes, I do think it's a great way to learn a language. Italian is very easy to transcribe and that's why I enjoy listening to Italian music - even if I don't know a particular word, I can always go ahead and just look it up in a heartbeat. Once I've seen what it means, I memorize it and next time I don't need to repeat the process. Listening to music truly is an amazingly effective way of learning the language.
 
imperivm1 said:
Yes, I do think it's a great way to learn a language. Italian is very easy to transcribe and that's why I enjoy listening to Italian music - even if I don't know a particular word, I can always go ahead and just look it up in a heartbeat. Once I've seen what it means, I memorize it and next time I don't need to repeat the process. Listening to music truly is an amazingly effective way of learning the language.
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You'll probably enjoy the dictation then! Try finding a video of someone reading in Italian (or even better, someone to read out loud to you) and listen to it once before playing it out with stops to write things down. Then, when you'd written everything (about a minute of the video is enough), listen to it again to check whether you'd missed anything. It's good to find an audio book of a novel or a short story. That way you have the original at hand and can easily check your text for mistakes.
 
I agree completely! While my girlfriend studied English in high school, she really learned on a deeper level after listening to English music constantly. You get the here interesting metaphors, popular sayings, etc. Also, the words get stuck into your head and you can find yourself singing along to the melody, which can also help with pronunciation. I began listening to Italian music a year ago and it has helped me tremendously. Ligabue tends to speak very clearly when he sings, so I would recommend him for beginners.
 
I know that music is a very good way you can learn a language. I agree this can be a very< helpful method.

By the way, (if anyone knows) I was wondering whether church music is only in Latin or whether some songs are sung in Italian - if that is the practice at all, that is? I'd heard some beautiful pieces in Latin and so far, I know only of "Santa Lucia" in Italian - a beautiful piece, really. Rome and the Vatican had played an important part in the history, so it's natural to assume that Latin has "survived" in a way, but I was curious about songs in Italian.

(I hope I haven't offended anyone with my question :D )
 
This is a revelation, truly. I had somehow always assumed that church songs would be in Latin, not Italian. Latin seemed... more rigid... more... let's call it conservative. But then again, years have passed and it's normal that many changes were made. I liked the song very much, by the way! It's very beautiful. I think we have something similar... I'd heard it somewhere before...
 
For me, the best about learning languages through music or movies is to see them with subtitles, that helps a lot. If it's not with subtitles it's great to catch the correct sonority as well.
 
I enjoyed reading all the posts about the relationship between learning a new language and music. Thanks to all for providing some great videos, too.

I often wondered if church music was in Italian or Latin. It makes sense that Latin would be reserved for more formal occasions. I know when my parents attended Mass, as children, it was all in Latin. So, I wondered if this tradition was carried on in Italy. Thanks for the information.

Peninha said:
For me, the best about learning languages through music or movies is to see them with subtitles, that helps a lot. If it's not with subtitles it's great to catch the correct sonority as well.
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I think this might be a good fit for me, personally. I always watch television with caption. I think this would translate over easily with music. You would think my husband would like captions too, since his parents were hearing impaired. Yet, he says captions are distracting, even though he grew up with captions.
 
Even if we can't find them on tv we can easily look it up on Google and that is a great help because not only we pick up the correct sounds, but also we learn quite a few new words. A must when learning languages. :)
 
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