"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

[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).