Would you listen to music in a language you didn't understand?

[soulreapersteve]

I've been listening to Vocaloids for quite awhile now and I understand 2% of what they say xD Used to listen to K-pop but stopped about 2 years ago. Occasionally, I meander back and see whats new.

[Mitsune05]

I don't have any problem listening to songs in other languages, especially those that I don't know. If i really want to find out what they say, i can google it and try to find a translation. But what i do is usually paying attention to the instrumental and the lead vocals - don't really care what they say though.

[OneStory]

Yes. I'm listening to Japanese and Hindi, also some Western and Indonesian (Oops, Indonesian is my native language, by the way~ so it doesn't count). For English song, my listening is very bad. Japanese, I can catch the lyrics but sometimes or mostly always I don't know the meaning. Hindi, I don't know at all, and I want to learn it >.<

Music is an universal thing, it surpasses all the differences.

[ryuutohime1982]

I often listen to music in languages I don't understand. Mostly asian languages these days, weirdly O.o. When I began listening to Japanese music I didn't speak Japanese, so that was really the beginning of my asian music thing. I have some korean, some mandarin, one song that's in mongolian and cantonese, one vietnamese song...

I'm learning mandarin but very basic so I understand only a few of the words. More if I see the characters, actually. So yeah. Music isn't about the language its in, right?

[Silverdrake]

Songs I like are in English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Japanese. I have Bleach songs (Covers, Beats, etc.), Nena and Falco (I know know less German than Japanese). One song that drives me crazy is the title theme from "Last Hurrah for Chivalry" (Chinese) -- I can't find a lyric translation. That song is so incredible and so fits the movie, and I want to know what the words mean! But even without knowing, I love the song.

As Ryuu said, music isn't about what language it's in. It's about the evocative qualities created by the use of the instruments that create it. And voice is an instrument.

[deniz_dee]

Lately, I've taken an interest in songs with lyrics in latin.

I love O Fortuna.

I absolutely adore it.

And can somewhat sing along and understand it. Not too hard considering the ethymology.

[cp1983]

They need to make music that allows one to speak the language fluently after listening to it in full Think of how awesome that would be if you bought an album and after one full rotation, you became bilingual everyone who likes music would have some kind of amazing career and their lives would change for the better - yay!

I listen to death metal.
I think that's more indiscernible than any music in any other language.

[Silverdrake]

Originally Posted by deniz_dee

I love O Fortuna.
I absolutely adore it.
And can somewhat sing along and understand it. Not too hard considering the ethymology.

Ahhh! Same here! I just grabbed it off YouTube a couple weeks ago. With lyrics!

@CP That would be unutterably awesome! Really make "music is a univeral language" literally true.

And yeah, death metal is pretty much indecipherable. Which is why I usually don't like it. "Gargling the microphone" is something that's annoyed the hell out of me since I was a kid. If there are lyrics, I want to be able to understand them (or at least distinguish the words, if I can't understand the language).