Grammars of Songs

Quangtn03 wrote:

Hello everybody. I'm trying to learn by heart some English songs. My trouble is that I try to understand them including grammars and rythms. I can learn the rythm, but it's difficult to do the same with the grammar. How do you sing an English song? Do you pay attention much with the grammar? I will paste an lyric of "Mouse love the rice" song below. Bold lines are what I couldn't comprehend completely. Can you show me ways to sing an English song? Thank you very much. When that day I hear your voice, I have some special feeling Let me always think I don't wanna forget you I remember at the day You are always on my mind eventhough I just can think about you If the day in the future, this love will becoming true ==> This would make more sense with be coming (two words) I've never changed my mind that I will love you forever I don't care how fool it is I will let my dream come true I will tell you something I wanna let you know, I let you know I love you, loving you, as the mouse love the rice ==> not grammatical Even every day has storm, I will always by your side ==> The word 'be' seems to be missing (always be by your side) I miss you, missing you I don't care how hard it is I just want you to be happy Everything, I do it for you Or you can see the lyric at the web page: http://www.1songlyrics.com/y/yang-chengang/mouse-love-the-rice.html Thank for your replies

Hi Quangtn03
The lyrics for songs often contain slang and unusual wording. However, a number of the lines in this song sound more like something written by a non-native speaker of English whose English is simply not very good. 

No, I don't think about the grammar in lyrics unless a student asks me about it.  One way to sing an English song is simply to try to imitate what you hear. 

Hi,
if you want to learn a song, you have to listen to it several times... and try to sing along. If you don't understand the words, you can't sing, can you? Otherwise, you'll end up mishearing the lyrics, like I always do (I'm delivered --> I'm the leader, I'm tried of being what... --> It's time to be what...) LOL But you can sing a song even if you don't understand the meaning of the words, as long as you know the lyrics.

That song is probably kind of "Asian"... so maybe you could find typical Asian mistakes (Engrish), like wrong use of auxiliary verbs and missing articles.

Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that you might hear sentences like "the mouse love the rice" in songs very often, and it's not necessarily "Asian-English" or wrong. In Ebonics, a dialect of English, you'll hear sentences like that. If you listen to hip-hop music, you'll actually hear that most of the times (Examples: "She make you want to...", "That that don't kill me can only make me stronger").

Quangtn03 wrote:

I fear that if I try to learn by heart the songs with their mistakes, they will become my mistakes.

Yes, that already happens to me, lol.
I might say "don't" instead of "doesn't"... but it's not my fault if I keep on hearing "That that don't kill me can only make me stronger" on the radio, all day long.

So don't learn grammar from songs. Try not to learn anything from songs, not even prounciation. Often some words are mispronounced, but that's normal when you sing. Well, you can learn some new words from songs, though.
Just like songs for what they are: songs.

Hi again,
sorry, I meant to say that you should avoid considering songs as a major means of learning English.

You don't learn good pronunciation by listening to songs. Often words are mispronounced (because they are sung). So you'll often hear "crazy" pronounced "cray-zeh", reduced diphthongs so "my" will sound as mah, etc. When I started to learn English the only stuff I listened to were songs. That's why I used to sound southern, LOL (I used to pronounce every final y as eh... I was hap-peh, lol).

You won't learn good grammar either.

But you could learn some new words.

If you want to sing a song because you like it, just sing it. And mispronounce the words the same way you hear them, if you want to sound like the singer. That's ok, and it's fun, as long as that's not the only way you study and practice English. That's what I wanted to say.