Thread: Learning songs and poems helps to study foreign languages

Lampada said that repeating and learning songs can help one to study a language, especially pronunciation. To show what kind of pronunciation one can learn, I give a link to a song, performed by an Irish tenor John McCormac.
YouTube - John McCormack - When Irish Eyes Are Smiling
Poems really help. I recorded an Irish poem and was told that I had only a light accent.
If someone wishes, I can put it here.

Thanks for the link. I would love to hear! I considered posting my attempts at performing some Russian songs I've been practicing. But I didn't want to seem the braggart, and anyway I didn't want to make anyone cringe, if my version doesn't "cut the mustard." =)

What do you think about his accent?

But I didn't want to seem the braggart, and anyway I didn't want to make anyone cringe, if my version doesn't "cut the mustard." =)

Don't be afraid, dare! No one will laugh at you.
My Irish poem here Яндекс.Народ

With a name like that, he is a native speaker. That is an old fashioned way of singing that is not often heard.
But in Scotland and some other places, the Rs are rolling, like in this song - otherwise most native English speakers have a hard time with rolling Rs.
If you listen to very old speeches by upper class people in Britain from early in the last century, then they sometimes speak in the way that McCormack is singing. I don't know why though, and nobody ever speaks like that anymore - well maybe the Queen, to some degree.

I agree with Lampada that songs can help learning a language. It certainly helped my English.
When I was a kid I memorised some Russian songs, in school and in choir; we just learnt the words without knowing the exact meaning, so we could sing the refain in Russian, or something like that. These words have been a lot easier to remember afterwards. But it was not a lot of songs, maybe 5 - 10 so it did not give me a large vocabulary.

I also listened a lot to Russian radio for a while, and some hits were played again and again and the words get stuck in your mind, even if you do not know what they mean - then when you come across them in study, they are easier to remember.