I have a confession to make. When I listen to tango music, I pull up todotango so I can read the lyrics, and I sing along. If anyone saw me doing this I would be so embarrassed. Why? I don’t know. But it really helps me understand the songs.
Castellano is very much like Italian (in fact, they share 82% lexical similarity) so I don’t normally need a dictionary to understand the words themselves, but seeing the lyrics on the screen and actually singing them out loud, putting them in the context of a tango song, sounding the words out, really brings me what I feel is a special understanding of the music that I wouldn’t otherwise have.
Maybe someday it will help me feel more confident about speaking Spanish - singing along to music helped my Italian, after all…
Does anyone else do this?
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11 users responded in this post
I don’t but I think that’s a brilliant idea for someone like me! I hadn’t checked out todotango in months, I am going to start now. I do want to know what the songs are about. After all, it’s all about the music, right?
Are u kidding? I do it all the time. In fact I did it before I even knew a word of Spanish. It really helped me actually. And its a lot of fun. I used to do it when I was getting ready to go to tango, going from the mirror to the laptop screen, singing the parts I know in front of the mirror as I am putting on mascara, then going to to laptop to read the parts I don’t know.;)
What a fantastic idea!!
i do. that’s how i polish my french when i have no one to speak french with — singing along to chansons… and something even sillier (and so annoying that i do it just at home when i’m alone) repeating after the dialogue in films!
I do that too! I love to sing along to music by myself, so when I was learning Italian, it seemed logical to use that as a route to fluency. Like you, I understand most of the words in Spanish songs thanks to my fluency in Italian. It is wonderful for learning pronunciation, and emphasis, and some vocabulary although the vocabulary ends up being a little limiting– very useful for love and betrayal and all that, though.
I do that constantly, although in my case it’s not tango music
http://www.planet-tango.com/letras.htm
Tina, Hi. I do that too, (I like to know what I am crying about.) Sometimes I like the site listed above when I need to get an english translation. Do they have a translation to english on the todotango?
I would love to find someone local to help me with my speaking before the trip in November! I only know a little regular spanish spanish. I hear that there is a great difference in the lunfardo.
I meant Castellano, not lunfardo.
I sometimes get to dance with this follower who knows the lyrics to most of the songs, and she would sing them softly in my right ear as we dance. I love it!
Elizabeth, you’ll have to come to La Garua on Sunday and practice Spanish with the organizers
gentimiento! that sounds so sexy! i wonder what it would be like for a man to do the same to me? i would melt!
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