Can you study Chinese through music?

 Let's talk about Chinese Music

As most of you already know, immersion is a big part of learning a language, and one of the easiest ways to do this is through music. But when learning Chinese, music might not be the best way to improve your pronunciation, because Chinese is a tonal language, and when singing sometimes the tones can get lost, but this doesn't mean that it's impossible to study through music; there are still multiple ways in which music can help you improve your language skills. 

Methods to study through Music

If you want to improve your reading, you can try reading lyrics and translating them. This can really help you with your comprehension, because lyrics tend to be filled with metaphors. I usually use short songs and the ones in which the vocabulary is familiar to me. The artist I like the most for this method is: Deca Joins, I think the vocabulary in their lyrics is relatively simple. If you want to try translating some songs, I recommend the following: 散去的時候, 春天游泳, 關渡口, 路, 眼睛裡. The first song I ever translated was: 春天游泳.

If you want to improve your listening, then music will become your best friend, I always recommend listening to podcasts because it sharpens your hearing, and you can notice the different tones, but sometimes podcasts can get a little too distracting and that's where music can come in and help you.

It's true that in most songs you can't easily notice the tones, but you can start identifying the words that you have been learning. I usually tend to listen to Chinese music when I'm doing my Chinese homework. I believe that it helps me put my brain into Chinese, and when that happens it's easier for me to create sentences, because my brain is focusing on that specific language, I've been using the same playlist for a while and the more I listen to it the more vocabulary I recognized.

Finally, let's talk about pronunciation, as I mentioned before singing is not the best way to practice your pronunciation, but there's a genre that's an exception, and it's: Rap, this genre is harder to understand because Rap songs tend to be quite fast, but I believe that if you listen a song for long enough you will be able to understand it. As for singing, Rap would help you improve your pronunciation, because this genre is basically like talking really fast, so the tones don't usually get lost. To be honest I don't listen to a lot of Rap music even though I should, because pronunciation is the aspect I struggle with the most, but from the few rappers I listen to I can recommend you the following: Masiwei, 小鬼 (lil ghost), K!ddingboi, PO8, Piggy, Lexie Liu, and G.E.M. 

If you want to learn more about how to study with rap music I recommend you to watch: Don't learn Chinese with Pop Songs, in this video Rita goes in depth on how to use this method.

My personal favorite

It's important to remember that you can simply like Chinese music, it doesn't need to always be a method of study, sometimes you can just relax and enjoy it. In my case, I specially love listening to Chinese music when I'm walking my dog. Here are some of my favorite artists: Julia Wu, Shi Shi, Tanya Chua, 我是機車少女, 打倒三明治, Anni Hung, Vinida Weng, Lay, Z.Tao, Karencici, 懷特, Rainie Yang, WayV, J.Sheon, Sweet John and Gong. 

If you want to check out my playlist, just click in this link: playlist