7 Reasons to Sing When Learning a Language

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At the bottom of this post, you’ll see a 2010 video of me singing German in Berlin. It is rough karaoke, and that is part of the point.

Singing can be a useful addition to language practice, especially for repeating phrases, noticing rhythm and staying engaged. It is not a substitute for listening to ordinary speech or having conversations.

The song is “Pflaster” by Ich + Ich. I am not a polished singer, but you do not need a polished voice to use this exercise.

7 Reasons to Sing in the Language You’re Learning

Music and singing have helped my language practice and given me an easy way to connect with people. Here are seven reasons to try it:

1. A shared song can break the ice. When I sang something people did not expect me to know, it often gave us an immediate topic. In my first weeks in Berlin, the opening of the German Sesame Street song helped me make friends. With people from Madrid, I sometimes sang the theme from Aquí no hay quien viva in an Irish accent. The reaction depended on the person, but the shared reference made starting a conversation easier.
2. Songs can introduce cultural references. One song cannot represent a whole culture, but it can lead you towards artists, humour, history and varieties of the language. Music practice can also resemble learning a musical instrument: listen closely, imitate, get feedback and repeat.
3. Lyrics give vocabulary a memorable context. Work with lyrics you can legally access, check unfamiliar words in a reliable dictionary and note the register. Songwriters bend word order, pronunciation and grammar for rhythm, so do not treat every lyric as a model for everyday speech.
4. Singing can train attention to sound. My intensive singing lessons while studying Brazilian Portuguese made me focus on sentence rhythm, pronunciation and timing. That helped my speaking, but sung pronunciation can differ from speech. Pair the song with a spoken model, and use my Carioca pronunciation notes if that is the variety you are studying.
5. Melody may support short-term phrase recall. In one experiment, 60 adults who learned unfamiliar Hungarian phrases by singing performed better across a set of immediate tests than groups who spoke or rhythmically spoke them. That is promising evidence for a practice tool, not proof that songs alone produce fluency: Ludke, Ferreira and Overy's study.
6. Your phone makes repetition portable. Save a legal recording or stream it when available, and practise during a walk or another suitable moment. Background music alone is not the exercise: pay attention to the words, sounds and meaning.
7. Enjoyment can make repetition easier to return to. If you like the song, repeating one section may feel less tedious than drilling a disconnected list. Singing will not suit everyone, so keep it only if it helps you practise consistently.

Choose one song with a clear recording and lyrics you can legally read. Work on a short section: listen, check the meaning, speak the lines, sing along, then record yourself and compare.

Keep the goal narrow. Learn a few useful phrases, notice one pronunciation feature and then try those phrases in ordinary speech.

The video above is my German attempt. Watch it as evidence that you can do the exercise without waiting to sound polished, then choose your own short section and start.