Why you Can’t Understand Japanese Song Lyrics
Learning Japanese using music is great for motivation. It’s one of the most fun resources out there, and you probably enjoyed the Japanese before you could understand it. Music is music after all, and lyric comprehension is mostly optional (?) However, there eventually comes a time when you want to listen to Japanese music and fully appreciate it, without ignoring the lyrics.
You tried at beginner level: you failed
You tried again at intermediate level: you failed
You tried yet again at advanced level: you failed
What’s going on here?
Understanding Japanese songs is one of the hardest things you can do in Japanese. Harder than literature. Harder than watching the news. Harder than talking to an older male taxi driver that mumbles. Did you think songs were supposed to be easy? Nope.
Let’s get the first truth out of the way which you may already know. Natives have trouble understanding the lyrics of songs. There are songs you could listen to over repeatedly and never come close to getting what is being said. Why do you think lyric sheets were invented? I’m not saying all songs are like this, but many songs have some part that is hard to hear. And this for natives.
Why is it so tough?
Songs are noisy
Don’t you hate it when the music gets in the way of a song? Depending on the genre, it puts the words in the background. Slower songs can still have loud points where the voice to music ratio isn’t optimized.
The Japanese is not normal
Songs are works of art and encourage creativity within the language. That’s what makes them special. It isn’t just someone talking. When you allow this much creativity, you get new ways of saying words and structuring sentences.
The pronunciation is different
In order for there to be a natural flow and melody to a song, words are pronounced differently from how they would be spoken. You might not ever hear certain pronunciation except in music. You might not even hear it outside that one specific song you are listening to.
English and Japanese mix
English is the real lyric killer. Did you think English lyrics in a Japanese song gave you an advantage? This English is almost always given Japanese pronunciation. These aren’t Japanese katakana loan words which you are used to either. It’s an entirely different beast.
The English situation in Japanese songs makes it difficult to guess lyrics. In your own native language, typically when you can’t understand a lyric, you can try to guess it based on what it sounds like. However, when the lyric may be English or Japanese, and you aren’t sure which one, it expands the possibilities making it harder to pin it down.
My Japanese lyric challenge for you
I’m a fan of the anime Overlord. In typical anime song fashion, the opening from Season 2 has some frustratingly difficult to understand lyrics, due to all the problems above. Don’t believe me? I challenge you to listen to the song, and transcribe the lyrics for the song between 0:15 to 1:19 (the first verse), in the comments section below this post. This is pretty short, so it shouldn’t take that much time (yeah, right…) and you can see why Japanese lyrics are out to get you.
Or if you want a quicker challenge, I dare you to try to transcribe the line at 0:30-0:35. If you can pull that off, you also win.
The image of the anime is fitting for the challenge…
Founder of Jalup. iOS Software Engineer. Former attorney, translator, and interpreter. Still watching 月曜から夜ふかし weekly since 2013.
At 30 seconds I got 突き進め、果てるまで and that’s about it. I looked up the rest of the line and yeah, I don’t think I ever would’ve gotten that. It’s a deadly combination of English that isn’t really used in Japanese being used in a way that doesn’t really make sense in English being pronounced in a middle-ground between both of them. Luckily, for being the hardest medium to understand, it’s also the one with the most easy-to-find transcriptions.
I don’t think any human being could ever get it. I’m looking at the lyrics and listening and still don’t get it :)
While transcriptions are abundant and great, you have to prepare in advance just to understand the song!
My biggest takeaway here is that Overlord has a 2nd season! Im gonna need to watch that haha
Haha, yes you definitely need to.
Oh thank you! So many people seem to suggest that listening to Japanese songs is a great way to learn Japanese, but, as you say, the pronunciation is so different. Often every syllable gets pronounced so 言います for instance becomes いーいーまーす with the u in す pronounced to add extra confusion.
There are ways to use songs to learn Japanese, but that comes down to taking apart the written lyrics that you have provided for you. Or maybe memorizing the lyrics and singing karaoke with them. Not just listening to the song.
I think Japanese songs fall more into the “great way to motivate you to learn Japanese” category.
I’ve been a Nirvana fan since 1991 and I still can’t understand the lyrics.
*mumblemumble* Penny Royal Teeeeeaaaaa *mumblemumble*
Lyrics are hard even in your native language so you have nothing to be than be excited every time you do understand a lyric in another language!
I think you better just listen to the “Japanese version” of the song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWM-ufG83rI
Yeah, this always confused me when my Japanese started to get better. I was like, I can understand most conversations I hear in Japanese with friends but still can’t understand a word of most songs. But yeah, I realised words are split up, particles and other grammar forms sound like they make new words because of where they end up being placed in the melody and stuff like that.
I understand korean in k-pop ten times easier than Japanese music and my korean isn’t even close to my Japanese. One of the main reasons I never thought about until this article was in k-pop the English is spoken usually with an American accent which greatly lowers the confusion between the English and korean parts and also korean just seems to flow better in music. Have no idea why, just does.
That would do it. English spoken with an American accent rather than spoken with a strong Japanese accent (where anything goes) would definitely make a big difference.
I think it varies widely depending on what artist you listen to.
Try for example listening to 光の中へ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXPit9RiOTE) by Sakamoto Maaya, 手紙 by Angela Aki (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siQJhIp-UTU), or the Vampire Princess Miyu TV ending song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noHeyv85FHs).
I challenge anyone to listen to these songs (of course without looking at the lyrics) and NOT be able to make out the majority of what is being said (that is, not necessarily knowing all the vocabulary, but being able to make out the sounds of the words being said). Depending on who is listening there might be some people who don’t know all of the vocabulary in these songs yet, but making out the singer’s pronunciation shouldn’t be very difficult.
And I don’t think that clearly-sung lyrics are really the exception, either. Sometimes I like to listen to Japanese radio, and I would say that when listening to a song on the radio for the first time that I have never heard before, usually while doing something else at the same time (like driving), the vast majority of the time I can make out more than 50% of the lyrics.
Of course I wouldn’t recommend trying to study Japanese with something that you hate, but people who either already like or are able to develop an appreciation for J-pop are going to have the advantage of the time spent listening to Japanese music being actually somewhat useful, rather than “just for enjoyment” or “just for motivation,” so it might be worth it to try it out and see if you can find something you like.
Well this is super discouraging to hear as it’s one of the main reason why I am tackling this project. Maybe I could be an outlier. Hey, as long as I have the lyrics on paper I should be alright through, right? I import a lot of Japanese CD’s so I often have lyrics handy but it’s sad to hear listening to random Japanese songs and understanding it just won’t be possible for a long time :(
I think you will be fine. I try to understand a lot of lyrics as well and its not like you have no chance of understanding. Its more similar to songs sung in other languages, there are parts which are really difficult to understand, but most of it is quite understandable (eventually). Depending on artist, style and a lot of other things of course.
Especially when you have the lyrics written nearby its not a too far off goal in my opinion. It is still a lot of work (and time), but if this is your main reason you should not let this article discourage you.
Thanks for the encouragement. I don’t underestimate the difficulty, I’m prepared for the long fight ahead but I’m still really new haha. Music is a huge part of the reason I’m here so it’s good to know it’s an attainable goal :)
I’m been learning japanese by myself for a few years now, songs are a nightmare indeed, all my Japanese friends say so too, recently I started reading manga, after achieving a natural speed reading level I wanted to tune even more my reading skills by talking out loud and doing some research about this I stumbled upon a concept called 朗読 (どうろく) which is basically a way to redact used by tv announcers ands singers alike, apparently this a thing and that is way the pronunciation seems to be change for some words, every 拍 (Haku/mora) is pronounced by its own independently of the word, with this in mind it became a little easier for me to follow song verses, I hope this was useful ✌🏻