Using Broadcast Media to Learn a Language

Last Friday, we began a series of posts on how to use various forms of media to learn a language, starting with a look at print media. Today we're back with a look at how broadcast media can help you achieve your linguistic aims, specifically radio, music, television, and film.

Radio towers in Nishapur, Iran

Radio

Thanks to the internet, you don't need to be in-country or living in a border region in order to listen to the radio in the foreign language you want to learn. The obvious advantage of the radio over printed media is that you can actually hear how the language sounds, which always helps with aural comprehension. It also helps improve your own speaking skills.

Music

The great thing about music is that you can always have it on in the background. Hearing songs and learning the lyrics are a fun way to learn a foreign language. In fact, the first thing I ever learnt in Spanish was the lyrics to David Bisbal's "Ave Maria" in order to beat some Spanish friends at the "SingStar" video game. Admittedly, lyrics can often be obscure, but it can still help with your vocabulary and pronunciation.

TV

Watching TV is great for your listening skills. Like radio, it allows you to hear how the language sounds. If you have a cable or satellite TV package, you may even get a few channels in the language you're trying to learn. Whether you watch the news, a series, or even a show you've watched in your own language dubbed or subtitled in the language you're trying to learn, you'll undoubtedly learn something new.

The Colonial Theatre in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, actually
features on the U.S. Register of Historic Places!

Film

If you live in a big enough city, you should be lucky enough to have an alternative cinema or somewhere you can watch foreign-language films. Of course, don't go see a version of a foreign-language film dubbed into your own language or you won't learn anything! Subtitled films are great because you can always follow the story in your own language or, if you're advanced enough, ignore them and focus on the foreign-language audio.

If you don't have an alternative cinema or just prefer watching films from the comfort of your own home, consider buying foreign-language films to watch at home. That way you can always just turn the subtitles on and off as you see fit!

We'll be back on Wednesday with a look at how digital media can help you learn a language.

Hatsune Miku: Virtual Vocals and Synthetic Singing

During a recent Facebook scrolling session, an odd link popped up on my news feed. It was this video of a musical performance on the Late Show with David Letterman.

You don't need to be the most observant person in the world to realise that the performer, Hatsune Miku, or 初音ミク, as her name is written in Japanese, is not a real person. Hatsune Miku is not the first virtual performer; other popular virtual acts include Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Archies, and Gorillaz. However, Hatsune Miku can do something that other acts can't do: sing.

You may think that her high-pitched singing is not as good as the sped-up singing of Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, and you may be right. However, the Chipmunks, much like other virtual acts, had their music and their vocals pre-recorded. Hatsune Miku's vocals are synthesised using Yamaha's VOCALOID2 and VOCALOID3 vocal synthesisers.

If you're familiar with Japanese, you may recognise the components of Hatsune Miku's name. In fact, the name translates as "the first sound from the future", with Hatsu (初) meaning "first", Ne (音) meaning "sound", and Miku (ミク) meaning "future".

Sapporo, Japan, the hometown of Hatsune Miku.

While 16 year-old Hatsune Miku could be said to be from Sapporo, the technology that allows her to sing was conceived of in Spain as part of a research project at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.

Hatsune Miku's voice isn't purely synthesised and is in fact generated from phonemes prerecorded by Japanese voice actress Saki Fujita. Initially, only Japanese phonemes were recorded, before learning English (from Saki Fujita's recordings) for a later release. This allows her to sing in both languages, albeit with a Japanese accent when she sings in English.

The process that allows for the manipulation of the phonemes into song is known as concatenative synthesis. Using this process, sound samples (known as units) can be manipulated. This allows the user to modify a range of qualities, including the unit's length, pitch, and timbre.

Since anyone who owns the software can synthesise speech and vocals, Hatsune Miku is "technically" the performer of thousands of songs. She's not alone, though. There are also other virtual performers available with different language combinations such as Spanish and Chinese. Other languages can also be approximated using preexisting phonemes, with differing levels of success.

The Worst Uses of English in Songs

While I am very much in favour of multilingualism and believe that everyone should at least learn a second language, I do feel there is a time and place for multilingualism. Quite some time ago, we put together a list of the songs in English that almost ruined other languages for us, before adding a few more to that list.

It may surprise you that it is not just English speakers who are making these linguistic faux-pas. Today we've created a list of artists that should have either stuck to their mother tongues or spent a little longer studying both grammar and pronunciation when it comes to English. While I could easily mention any of the Eurovision entries from this year, I've instead decided to throw together 5 songs that I actually like but certainly should have never had any English in them.

Robert Ramirez - Sick of Love

I first heard this song in Spain a few years ago, and while it was often played in clubs, it fortunately never seemed to make its way to English-speaking audiences (at least not the UK or the US). I can only imagine that its lack of popularity in English-speaking countries is due to its horrendous butchering of the English language. While I'm certainly not saying this is the only song to have nonsensical lyrics, it tops off its lyrical nonsense by mispronouncing a large number of English words including "sugar" and "evil".

Discobitch - C'est Beau La Bourgoisie

I have a love-hate relationship with this one. While Discobitch's franglais electro track was the anthem of my Erasmus year, it always hurt my ears to hear the incorrect conjugation of "grow" in the line "and all the piles of money that grows next to you". You could argue that it is conjugated with "money" but that would make even less sense. Also, repeating "I'm a bitch", while somewhat funny the first time, becomes very crude and childish come the fiftieth time.

Nozomi Sasaki featuring Astro - Kamu To Funyan

This song is everything you would expect from J-Pop and more. While throwing seemingly random English words into songs is common practice in Japan, I can't bring myself to enjoy the sugar-crack-coffee-infused mayhem without cringing at "lucky let's working" with "working" being pronounced like "walking". In addition, there's also the needless addition of "everyday", "all day", "happy end", and "peace of life", to name a few pointless English words that are as welcome as dog in a cat shelter.

Psy - Gangnam Style

Don't think that I'm only singling out J-Pop for its obsession with random English words. K-Pop is just as guilty, including the worldwide YouTube sensation "Gangnam Style", which has English right there in the title. "Hey, sexy lady" is certainly the main offender for this song that could have simply been entirely in Korean. However, I'm not sure it would have been anywhere near as popular if it was only in Korean as the random English is part of its appeal for English listeners.

Sak Noel - Loca People

It's the complete lack of necessity of the English in this one that really irritates me. Admittedly, when I first heard it, I knew it had to be a foreign artist and due to being very, very drunk at the time, still thought it was the greatest piece of music ever written. I'm not a stickler for profanity either, so it doesn't bother me that the word "fuck" is used almost non-stop for the hook. It's the awful pronunciation of the dialogue that's annoying. However, as there is pretty much a 50-50 split between the English and the Spanish in this one, you could argue that it's a candidate for the both the worst use of English and a foreign language in a song.

While I certainly promote learning a language and disparage mocking those who are, I think it's completely different when an artist adds the English language to a song, often not for artistic reasons, but rather in order to increase its potential global popularity. It would be nice just to live in a world where music could be globally popular without any English in it.

Are there any foreign language songs that you think should never have included English lyrics? What do you think of the songs on our list? Do you agree or disagree? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!

Why Must Eurovision Be So Monolingual?

Last night, we watched the first of this week's semifinals in the lead up to Saturday's Eurovision Song Contest. Despite our best intentions, we actually enjoyed it. What we didn't enjoy was the way in which a Europe-wide competition of music, for lack of a better description, seemed to lack any kind of linguistic diversity.

As we watched 16 countries vie for a place in the final, it was pointed out to us by the show's commentators that only two of these countries would actually be singing in a language other than English.

Copenhagen, the beautiful host city of this year's Eurovision.

The whole evening was aired live from Copenhagen, Denmark. Watching from the UK, we viewed it on BBC3, which quickly had its own commentators interrupt the three Danish hosts, despite them speaking in English, as if it would have been an atrocity for the British audience to hear near-perfect English from non-native speakers.

Performances in English

As a bit of a flag enthusiast, I did enjoy the country introductions, in which the performers made a version of their own flag out of something. After some pomp and ceremony, the first performance was Armenia's entry, "Not Alone", which as you can guess from the title is in English, rather than Armenian, the official language of the South Caucasus nation.

Though we salivated as Latvia made their flag out of cake, they didn't bother with Latvian. Their English-language song was a quirky number about cake, which I admit would have been lost on me had it not been in English. While I found the Estonian entry fairly forgettable, it would have probably been more memorable had it been in Estonian, or even the regional languages Võro and Setu, just to mess with everybody's heads.

As a big ABBA fan, I can hardly complain about Sweden's entry being in English, but after three songs in English, another language, especially Swedish, would have been nice change for the international competition. On a personal note, I loved Iceland's entry and was delighted when they made it through to the final, though I also think the performance was vibrant enough and the tune was catchy enough to have been in any language, except maybe Klingon...

I thought Albania's entry was so dull that I would have preferred it in Albanian so I could have at least researched the lyrics later, and perhaps even learn a tiny bit of the language whilst I was at it.

The Russian entry, complete with blonde twins on a see-saw, was bound to cause some controversy. Even though it wasn't in Russian or any of its 27 regional languages, it was still quite sad to see the Copenhagen crowd boo the performers. The 2012 hosts, Azerbaijan, didn't bother to promote their own language either, with their entry "Start a Fire", which made it through to the finals on Saturday.

The Ukranian entry, despite having a guy run in an over-sized hamster wheel, progressed through to the final. The song entitled "Tick-Tock" is English onomatopoeia rather than Ukranian or any of the 18 regional languages of the country, though as onomatopoeia, it is probably the most universal of the English-language semifinalists from Tuesday night.

Belgium, despite its three official languages, still picked a song in English. This is especially odd as two of Belgium's official languages, French, and German, are considered to be two of the most important languages in Europe, whilst the other official language, Dutch, is a personal favourite of mine.

Moldova's "Wild Soul" wasn't enough to get them to the final, and by this point I was pretty sick of English-language songs and would have happily welcomed a song in either Romanian, Ukranian, Russian, or even the Gagauz language, a Turkic language spoken by the Gagauz people native to parts of both Ukraine and Moldova.

While the Principality of San Marino didn't sing in Italian, they made it through to the final and their entry, "Maybe (Forse)", was performed in English, though an Italian version was also recorded.

As I have a soft spot for the Dutch language, it was a shame to hear that their entry was also in English. The Hungarian entry was sung by András-Kállay Saunders, a Hungarian American, though from the language choice and accent, you can tell he doesn't speak English as a second language, though he probably could sing in Hungarian.

In Their Own Language

The only two entrants to bother with their own languages were Portugal and Montenegro, who were both drawn to perform late in the running order. While the Portuguese entry "Quero Ser Tua" failed to make the final, the Montenegrin entry "Мој свијет", which was rendered using the Latin alphabet as "Moj svijet", made it to the final, making it the only finalist from the first semifinal to not be in the English language.

Did you watch the first semifinal? Will you be watching the second? Which of the acts were your favourite and would you prefer they sing in their own languages? Tell us in the comments below.

April 30: International Jazz Day

Today we have another obscure holiday for you. It's International Jazz Day, which is organised and recognised by UNESCO. UNESCO considers the objectives of this holiday to celebrate the "virtues of jazz as an educational tool, and a force for peace, unity, dialogue and enhanced cooperation among people". While this seems like a good reason to celebrate jazz, as per usual, we are more interested in the linguistic elements of jazz. First though, we need to really understand what jazz is.

You should already know that jazz is a type of music, shamefully dismissed by some as a way to be a pretentious hipster. In fact, jazz couldn't be farther from the pursuit of twenty-something white guys who sport vintage knitwear and enjoy only the obscurest of coffee-based beverages.

Jazz music started in the southern United States during the dawn of the 20th century as a lovechild between African and European music. When the harmonies of European music got together with African syncopation, swung notes, and improvisation, jazz was born.

New Orleans, one of the best places to enjoy jazz music.

As jazz was cultivated in a number of places, a number of subgenres arose, in addition to later fusions created from being mixed with a number of other musical genres. Whilst jazz has all these subgenres and fusions, the origin of the word jazz has a number of contested origins.

Jazz as a noun in the English language used in reference to music is thought to have come from the Creole patois word jass which either means "strenuous activity" or refers to the act of love-making, which while strenuous, is also incredibly enjoyable, just like jazz music.

While the name for jazz shares its etymological roots with the ethnic roots of the music, the word for one of the most important aspects of jazz, improvisation, is wholeheartedly European in origin. Improvisation, like many musical terms, comes from Italian improvviso, then improvvisare, making its way into French as improviser, before finally arriving in the English language as improvisation. However, it wasn't until 1786 when this word had a musical connotation in the English language. From the fifteenth century, the word actually referred to the unpredictable or an "unforeseen happening", which pretty much perfectly describes improvisation.

As you can see, these two words have both African and European origins, like jazz. In fact, the relation between jazz and language runs much deeper than mere etymology. Unfortunately, jazz music came about due to the deplorable slave trade in the United States in the nineteenth century. We think the slave trade was absolutely horrific, but the resulting jazz music is one of the very few good things to come from it. The obscure rhythms of jazz are inspired by the speech patterns of the African languages, so while music has shaped a lexicon, a family of languages could be said to have shaped jazz music entirely.

Languages In The News: January 2014

As we sluggishly approach the end of January, we hope you have managed to keep your resolutions. Today we'll be having a look at the top language news stories from the first month of the new year.

On the last day of the year NPR was clearly thinking about its resolutions for 2014. They put together an argument for why twerk and selfie are words that need to go.

The Guardian challenged spoken language with its fascinating look at prescriptivism in British dialects. Without asking, we later got the opposing opinion from across the pond from Techcrunch.

Of course, the beginning of the new year is always full of retrospectives on the previous year. The BBC was no exception, looking at the 20 most overused words of 2013 on New Year's Day.

It certainly seemed that on both sides of the pond, twerk and selfie were the most popular words of the year, as well as the most likely to be condemned to lexical hell.

Our favourite academic blog, Language Log also looked back at 2013 and the word "because" in its new, somewhat disgusting usage.

The Oxford University Press blog mixed music with language and showed us a number of instruments that took their names from their creators. Sadly, there was never a Mr. Piano or Mrs. Guitar, but there were a few interesting ones that we had no idea were named after a person.

Edutopia cleared the muddy waters of academic language with 8 strategies for teaching academic language.

The video game website Eurogamer had a story on a devoted group of translators who translated an entire game for free since there was no English version available.

NPR's codeswitch blog posted a riveting look at dying languages and the eventualities when their last monolingual native speaker dies, while the main site brought together science, music, and language in a story on a pill that could help you attain perfect pitch and language learning skills. Codeswitch was back in the latter half of the month with a look at Puerto Ricans living on the US mainland, revealing that not as many of them speak Spanish at home as one might think.

Slate gave us an interesting anthropological and etymological piece on the origins of Jewish surnames, plus a piece on translation and some of the more difficult terms to translate from The Metamorphosis.

Montreal Gazette had a divisive opinion piece on the ongoing debate of why English speakers should be speaking French in Quebec.

The Telegraph gave us proof that baby talk is still beneficial to speech development in infants.

It seems that for every colour there's an etymology.

By the middle of the month, we came across something quite amazing: a Buzzfeed article that wasn't a list peppered with GIFs! Not that we hate images of cute cats and reaffirming that we were born in the 80s, but it's always nice to see real articles there too, such as the one on the Spanish translation used for the Obamacare website. This wasn't long-lived as later in the month, Buzzfeed was back with a list, this time the 37 worst translated movie titles ever. Though it only includes Spanish language titles, it was nice to mindlessly muse over the translation decisions and why they were made.

Phys.org had scientific news that computational analysis had revealed elements of writing style that differentiates successful fiction.

Sarah Hashim-Wallace of the LA Times provided us with a piece in which she tested how useful the Google Translate app was on a trip to Tokyo. It may have received 4 out of 5 stars from one reviewer but the results in the field paint a very different picture.

Towards the end of the month an opinion piece from The New York Times appeared on translation as a performing art. We were drawn in by Antony Shugaar's piece and hope you will be too. To end the month, Gizmodo had a wonderful piece on the etymology of colours, plus a video with the Oscar-nominated song from Disney's Frozen in 25 languages was doing the rounds and we loved it! Here it is for your viewing pleasure:

Did we miss any of your favourite language articles? Tell us about them in the comments below.

The Best of 2013

What a year it's been! Today we'll be looking back at the best of 2013, including your favourite posts and guest contributions. We'll start with the Top 10 Posts of 2013:

Top 10 Posts of 2013

10: Intro to Linguistics: Thematic Relations

In April for our Intro to Linguistics series we looked at thematic relations. You guys seemed to appreciate it, as it makes its way into our Top 10 Posts at number 10.

9: Which is the Best Language to Learn

Exactly a year ago today we encouraged you to learn a language and helped you on your way by providing you with a shortlist for the best languages to learn in 2013. We hope you stuck to your resolution!

8: Russian Loanwords

Russian is often overlooked when it comes to languages that have influenced the lexicon of English. Back in April we had a look at a few examples of words that came from Russia with love, which made it our number 8 post this year.

7: Debunking Language Stereotypes: English

Though we hate language stereotypes, people seemed to like us setting the record straight back in March.

6: The Index Translationum

In January we looked at the Index Translationum, a list of books translated in the world. We found this bibliography of translations interesting and given that it is number 6 in our top 10 posts of 2013, you did too.

5: Swearing: How Words Become Offensive

Some people swear, others don't. Some people hate swearing, others don't. Back in March, we looked at just how cursed cursing is and whether we should really be so upset by it. Clearly you lot aren't massively upset by swearing or it wouldn't be number 5 in our list.

4: The Worst Use of Foreign Languages in Songs

We also addressed our dislike of artists using their non-native tongue in a song in March. Whilse we want people to learn languages, these examples were so bad that they show that the artists that were named and shamed should have studied a lot harder in school.

3: The Pros and Cons of Compulsory Language Learning

In May we addressed the educational issues surrounding compulsory language learning, an issue close to our hearts. It's clearly close to your hearts too and that's why it's number 3 in our list.

2: Intro to Linguistics: Morphological Typology

Another entry from our Intro to Linguistics series, our look at morphological typology was far more popular than we could have dreamed and made its way into our list in a silver medal position at number 2.

1: Word Categories for Dummies

Sometimes it seems that we are all suckers for life's simple pleasures. Our simplified look at word categories was the most popular post of 2013.

Favourite post not featured? Check out the other months of 2013!

January | February | March | April | May | June

July | August | September | October | November | December

Best Guest Contributions

To mark our first birthday back in September, we opened up The Lingua File to guest contributions. Here are the top five guest posts from this year, though that's not to say the others weren't amazing too! If you'd like to contribute to The Lingua File, send an email to info@thelinguafile.com.

5: Language and Politics: Defining Language by Jennifer Collins

In September, linguist and ESL teacher Jennifer Collins of Saundz.com looked at the relation between language and politics, how we define languages, whether countries can own languages, and how we choose official languages. We found it fascinating and so did our readers, making it number 5 in our best guest contributions.

4: Spelling Wars: The Problem with Reviving Languages by Rhian Davies

Rhian Davies, language policy and planning student, evaluated the spelling issues you encounter when you revive languages. Her post focusing on the minority language of Cornish was fascinating and earned it fourth place in our top 5 guest contributions.

3: Ways to Motivate Students to Learn English by Steven Armstrong

In October, freelance writer Steven Armstrong of SolidEssay.com looked at ways to motivate students to learn English. This informative and useful post is the first onto our imaginary podium.

2: 12 Uncomplicated Ways to Implement Italian into Your Everyday Routine by Cher Hale

Language enthusiast and adventurer Cher Hale of The Iceberg Project gave us 12 ways to get the Italian language into our everyday routine in order to help us master this beautiful and romantic Romance language. We found the steps indispensible and so did you. It's second in our list.

1: How to Be an English Language Tourist? by David Crystal

Our guest contribution from famed linguist David Crystal was always going to be number one on our list. The distinguished linguist was kind enough to contribute to The Lingua File and easily earned his place at the top of this list.

If your favourite Guest Post wasn't here, check out our other Guest Posts.

Thank you for being with us so far and we hope that 2014 is as good for you as 2013 was for us!

Happy New Year!!!

More Of The Worst Use Of Foreign Languages In Songs

A while ago we found five songs that deserved to be in the hall of shame for their atrocious use of a foreign language. We picked five songs that we felt merited the title of "The Worst Use of Foreign Languages in Songs" and felt we'd wrapped things up nicely.

Since then, we have had the misfortune of hearing even more horrendous examples and have had to extend our list to include a few more that get a big F grade for their use of foreign languages.

Samson and Delilah by Anthony Van Dyck

Muse - I Belong To You (Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix)

More attempts from the British rock trio to climb inside their own behinds with this one. If the French subtitle didn't do it for you, mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix, taken from the opera Samson and Delilah, features an over-Anglicised pronunciation of "réponds". Clearly, the singer didn't study how the acute accent over the letter e, (é) should be pronounced in French. He should just keep his falsetto in English.

Styx - Mr. Roboto

Though only featuring one line of Japanese, Mr. Roboto uses it just enough to get really annoying. The words dōmo arigatō misutā Robotto, meaning "thank you very much Mr. Roboto", almost kill the Japanese language and managed to spawn horrendous catchphrases. Styx should study their hiragana, katagana and kanji writing systems before they attempt to speak more Japanese.

Lady Gaga - Bad Romance

Though je veux ton amour et je veux ta revanche is used only briefly in the song, it's just to make Lady Gaga a tiny bit more pretentious, if that was even possible. The outspoken and often controversial singer adds this to a long list of things she shouldn't ever have done. Meat dress, anyone? Also, her song "Alejandro" has a few bits of Spanish and code-switching, but we felt nothing says unnecessary pretentious and cringe-worthy language usage like the French language.

A nice champagne...
now all we need is salmon.

Franz Ferdinand - Darts of Pleasure

The Scottish indie band Franz Ferdinand get a special mention for their use of German in this song. The lyrics in question, which go "Ich heiße Superphantastisch! Ich trinke Schampus mit Lachsfisch! Ich heiße Su-per-phan-tas-tisch", roughly mean "My name is Super-Fantastic! I drink Champagne with salmon! My name is Super-Fantastic!". Need we say more? Despite their German (technically Austrian) band name, they score a big 0 for their ability in the language.

Even now the list isn't exhaustive. If you have any more examples, tell us about them in the comments below.

The Worst Use of Foreign Languages in Songs

Though the charts across the world tend to be dominated by songs in English, every so often an English-speaking artist decides that their mother tongue is not good enough for a hit. We've got a list of a few of the most horrendous abominations to foreign languages we can think of...

ABBA - Voulez-Vous

We find it difficult to fault ABBA when it comes to music. The '70s are long gone and, thankfully, so is the attire. Though Swedish, ABBA's mastery of the English language is well-documented throughout their discography. Their mastery of French, however, is not. Don't get us started on Chiquitita...

Probably a stone's throw from the real Lady Marmalade's home.
The French Quarter, New Orleans.

Labelle - Lady Marmalade

"Voulez-vous coucher avec moi (ce soir)?" is the "only" French expression most English speakers seem to know when they're trying to be funny. Not only is the phrase horrendously pronounced throughout the song, but it has also led to many others thinking it's an accurate representation of the French language.

The Beatles - Michelle

The world's most famous band are under fire for their French ability. They certainly did some other horrendous things, linguistically speaking. We're not going to mention the stuff they did entirely in German... 

Manic Street Preachers - La Tristesse Durera

"That's not how it's pronounced!"

No strangers to being pretentious, the Manics have made a career from political controversy and making sure everyone knows that they're smarter than them when it comes to politics. When it comes to screaming Vincent van Gogh's last words, lead singer James Dean Bradfield gets a 0 out of 10.

U2 - Vertigo

The UK and Ireland have the lowest levels of bilingualism in Europe, with the UK having a worse record when it comes to foreign languages, except in this case. If Bono's flying the flag for a multilingual Ireland he's failing miserably. "Uno, dos, tres, catorce" is a horrendous error that U2 fans will defend as being intentional. Nice try! Bono should have studied harder in Spanish class.

This list is by no means exhaustive, so if you have any more to add or disagree with us, tell us in the comments below.

We've added a few more examples of the worst use of foreign languages in songs.

Music And Language

Here at The Lingua File we love music, and we also love language, obviously. Music and language are more closely linked than you may first think. We're about to tell you how:

Sounds

All spoken language is made up of sounds. We're vibrating air and causing areas of compression and decompression. Music is exactly the same thing. Compression and decompression of air.

The Ear

If both language and music are sounds, then the ear is the principal organ for being aware of either language or music. Of course, language isn't limited to sounds and the ear. Sign language works entirely with gestures and visuals, and writing works without any sound.

The Brain

With music and language both being sounds that are processed by the ear, then they must share some processes in the brain. Not only are they both processed by our ears and their corresponding neurons, they also are stored using common systems. The brain stores the underlying rules of both music and language, melodies and semantics, in the same system using the temporal lobes. The arbitrary information, however, is stored in independent systems for each.

Even though it uses the alphabet it goes from C to C...

A Written System

Both language and music feature systems in order to represent themselves visually. Languages have writing systems such as alphabets, abjads, abugidas, and logographic or syllabic systems. Music has sheet music, complete with staves, notation, key signatures, tempo, directions and anything else you might need in order to play the piece (instruments and/or orchestra not included).

The Words

Everything in the world is related to language in some way. We require a lexicon in order to name things, such as objects and abstract concepts. You'll find in music that most of these are Italian. Why? Put simply, Italians love music.

Here are twelve (the number of semitones in an octave) of our favourite musical terms and their origins:

A Capella: The meaning has altered slightly, but the idea of there being a group of people without instrument remains. From Italian for "in the style of the church/chapel".
Bass: From the Italian Basso, meaning low.
Cadenza: A solo part, usually improvised and ornamental. From Italian for "cadence".
Diminuendo: Getting quieter. It's the Italian word for "decreasing".
Encore: To be played again. From the French (for a change) word for "more" or "again".
Flat: Half a tone lower and finally an English word.
Geschwind: From German meaning "quickly".
Ma non troppo: This is perhaps the vaguest instruction ever, from the Italian for "but not too much". Use when asking for ice cream. (Though honestly, can one ever have too much ice cream?)
Presto: Very quickly. From Italian.
Quasi: From Latin and Italian for "almost".
Tutti: Italian for "all". When put with "frutti" you have a good bit of ice cream.
Wolno: From Polish, to be played loose or slowly.

You've just learnt the most important phrase
in Italian: "Tutti frutti, ma non troppo."