"Now that I understand what you're singing, please stop."

[muckefuck]

One of the benchmarks I use to determine how fluent I'm becoming in a language is the point at which insipid pop song lyrics begin to annoy the crap out of me. At lower levels of mastery, it's a thrill just to be able to decipher complete sentences. Only when comprehension is casual does it hold the potential to irritate.

I crossed the threshold with German partway through my year abroad. At some point, I found myself cringing at the more dire German pop on the radio and--for my sins--sought refuge in the French stations, for Chrissakes. I'm still not there in Spanish, since catching more than half of what the singer is saying on the first listen still counts as a minor victory. Bring on the banda!

It's not just a question of intelligibility, but also of familiarity. I'm sure the first couple hundred times I heard "night" rhymed with "tight", it sounded...alright; now I want a moratorium. It would take some effort to come up with similar examples for German, and I couldn't do it at all for other tongues. Sertab Erener could be the most original lyrical voice of her generation--or she could be the Turkish equivalent of The Outfield. I've got no basis for comparison.

Comments

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

:: laugh :: That was on a list I saw online somewhere of "signs you've successfuly become an Israeli", for people becoming Israeli citizens...

* When you can understand the lyrics to the Israeli Eurovision entries.
* When you with you couldn't.

:: chuckle ::

I was just thinking about this (pop music in other languages), and now that you mention it, there's some WAY overused rhymes in several languages that are used over and over and over. I'm half-tempted to make a list ... ^_-

[strongaxe.livejournal.com]

I read once that a famous chess player summarized his career in Chess by saying "I spent years learning how to play combinations, and then spent years learning how not to play them." :)

I have noticed a similar trend in technical areas, for example web page design. When someone first learns about how to create web pages, they learn about all kinds of fancy features like colors, animated gifs, transparent backgrounds, frames, flash, javascript, etc. - then once they become technically competent, they can focus their attention on artistic skills, which will tell them just how much they need to restrain the urge to pump the testosterone and use every possible trick in their repertoire to show everyone else how kewl they are, and instead restrain themselves by only using the tools they need to get the job done simply and elegantly.

I've also seen this in film - when a new technology comes out, someone decides to embrace it and often produces a film that is a good showcase for the technology - at the expense of all other film-making virtues (plot, story, acting, etc.)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

There's an equivalent in linguistics, too, in the area of artificial language construction: the "kitchen-sink con[structed ]lang[uage]". These are grab bags of every non-SAE feature that has caught the designer's fancy. They tend to be highly inflecting, with large phonologies, unusual noun classes, lots of moods and aspects, ergativity, etc.

[mooch.livejournal.com]

From context, I'd guess Standard American English.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

"Standard Average European", i.e. features common to languages such as French, German, English, and Portuguese. Esperanto is basically composed of them.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I don't know that I'd go so far. As suggested by its original name, Loglan, Lojban was created as a Gedankenexperiment: Could human beings learn and use a language whose grammar was based on that of formal logic? So I don't see it particularly reactionary--or, when it comes right down to it, as an auxlang in the same manner as Ido, Interlingua, or similar attempts.

What other ones do you have in mind? I think much of the appeal of Klingon stems from it being an artlang with very un-SAE grammar that is nevertheless not as difficult to learn as the natlangs it was inspired by.

[strongaxe.livejournal.com]

This is funny. I have noticed exactly the same thing!
When I hear music in a totally foreign language, I am fascinated with being able to understand phonemes. When I hear music in a language I know a little, I am fascinated with being able to parse inflections. When I hear music in a language I know better, I am fascinated with being able to recognize phrases. When I hear music in a language I know well, I can finally understand what it is they were saying, and (more often than not) wish I could forget it all and go back to being fascinated by the grammar instead of the insipid banality of the lyrics.

That being said, there are quite a few songs where the lyrics are profound and memorable. Unfortunately, these tend to be the minority; instead, there are many that are insipid and memorable, and you want to get them out of your head, but can't (advertising jingles come to mind, but much pop music is also like this).