After reading the song thread, an idea crossed my head -- shadowing songs.

I've never actually tried shadowing, but does anybody think this might be a good idea?

After hearing some Japanese singers, it might be possible to pick up improper pronunciation [I hate it when they sing て almost as た for example], but it might be a fun way to try following along with a native speaker every once in a while.

Probably would be easier than trying to speak along with a plain chunk of text.

It wont hurt. Everyone knows the power of music in learning...........

Anpanman's AIUEO is good for starters .

While I don't think anything you can do is -bad- for you, I'm not sure that singing is natural enough to be really worthwhile. To fit the tune, singers are forced to speed up and slow down and stretch sounds... This happens in all languages.

In addition, singing and speech use different parts of the brain. That's why some people who stutter talking can sing with no problems.

My advice: If you want to shadow most effectively, shadow real sentences and not songs. If you want to have fun, do whatever you want.

At the very least you will have a good time doing so. I often sing along when nobody is listening.. or when I think nobody is.

wccrawford Wrote:If you want to have fun, do whatever you want.

If you want sing-a-long songs, one of my favorites is だんご３兄弟:

English translation and explanation:
http://www.tokyowithkids.com/entertainment/dango.html

Earlier in my Japanese studies, I found that singing with a Japanese group helped me read kana more quickly and pronounce them more convincingly. I imagine singing along with the lyrics at the bottom of the screen would be similar, though there's less pressure -- unless you do karaoke.

Edit: here's another song for counters:

I play guitar a lot. I used to play Jack Johnson and stuff like that, but I gave up english music so now I play (and sing if I can) YUI, Angela Aki, and stuff like that. I realise I'm learning some vocabulary that might not be entirely useful day to day, and I don't put song lyrics in my SRS, but it's fun, it's exposure to the language, and knowing the intricacies of Japanese music can sometimes impress native speakers.

wccrawford Wrote:While I don't think anything you can do is -bad- for you, I'm not sure that singing is natural enough to be really worthwhile. To fit the tune, singers are forced to speed up and slow down and stretch sounds... This happens in all languages.

In addition, singing and speech use different parts of the brain. That's why some people who stutter talking can sing with no problems.

My advice: If you want to shadow most effectively, shadow real sentences and not songs. If you want to have fun, do whatever you want.

I agree. While I certainly listen to Japanese music everyday, I listen to ripped tracks of anime or movies, etc, more because music is...different. And for me not as useful. I listened to A TON of Japanese music before I started learning Japanese and...I didn't learn Japanese? Yeah, that's why I stick with anime, movies, and drama.

Actually, it's say it's fairly obvious that Japanese music is really in *three* languages anyways. the least spoken language of three is, of course, (normal) japanese. The second most spoken language is random bits of actual english. And the most spoken language happens to be incomprehensible (made up?) random bits of (fake?) english. Seriously, I hate english in Japanese music. It's gotten to the point that japanese music is nearly worthless to me (though that may be saying a bit much...).

igordesu Wrote:Seriously, I hate english in Japanese music.

I've gotten to the point where I hate it when they use english words at all... It now makes me grind me teeth. I just want to scream 'please don't do that to my language!' Until I started studying Japanese, I never realized how often they did it, either.

Of course, I'm talking about in anime, drama, jpop, etc. I don't interact socially with any native speakers, so I can't tell if they do it, too.

I have to assume this is yet another phase and I'll get over it, but it sure is annoying right now.

wccrawford Wrote:

igordesu Wrote:Seriously, I hate english in Japanese music.

I've gotten to the point where I hate it when they use english words at all... It now makes me grind me teeth. I just want to scream 'please don't do that to my language!' Until I started studying Japanese, I never realized how often they did it, either.

Of course, I'm talking about in anime, drama, jpop, etc. I don't interact socially with any native speakers, so I can't tell if they do it, too.

I have to assume this is yet another phase and I'll get over it, but it sure is annoying right now.

LOL. I've been getting that feeling lately as well. At first I didn't notice/care. Then I saw an episode of My Boss My Hero. A girl threw a basketball a friend and said, "ドンマイン." My first thought was, "WTF." She then used this unusual and random phrase once again whilst stealing the ball from the same friend during a game. Not saying it didn't make sense on some level. It was just weird, like a writer just wanted to throw some English in and didn't both to check the correct situational usage. I've been noticing weird English use everywhere now that this show brought it to my attention.

I suspect though, there is some Japanese individual getting the same impression from speakers of other language who add random Japanese in their sentences as well.

She must have said ドンマイ which is short for ドントマインド (Don't Mind.)
It is a popular phrase nowadays so it wasn't the writer that came up with it. (ドンマイ・ドンマイ・ドンマイ・ドンマイ　泣かないで~)

Regardless of who came up with it my theory about not researching it still holds, for now. And ドンマイ sounds even more weird, lol.

Yeah, ドンマイン is just stupid. I also hate when they take English words and give their own meaning to it... like ユニークする which can mean "put on an unfitting attitude" or something similar to that. "In real life he's shy and small but on TV he yuni-ku shiteru".