Improve Your French Pronunciation with Music
I challenged myself to sing a song in Spanish despite not knowing the language
A friend of mine recently challenged me to sing a song in Spanish. I don’t speak Spanish.
The only sentence I know is : Estoy aprendiendo español de España para molestar a Jonathan. Which means : I am learning Spanish from Spain to annoy Jonathan.
But well, I do like a challenge.
And I thought this was a perfect experiment to take on to understand how to better pronounce in a language we don’t quite master.
So I took the song — Simplemente Amigos — by Ana Gabriel. And went to work. And it was SO MUCH FUN. So if you are struggling with French pronunciation, here’s how I went about it.
1. Listen, deeply
Obviously, because we are talking about music, the first thing that you need to do is to listen a lot.
And I don’t just mean listen to the song.
But find a way to listen more deeply to the lyrics and the pronunciation.
It helps to have the lyrics at this stage. So you can follow along. But don’t focus on what is written, because that can influence what you hear.
Instead, focus on the pronunciation and then look at how it is written. That we will help you identify the places where it’s not written how you heard it.
In my case, there were several places where I did not expect to be written this way. For example, the word llegando — I was hearing J, and it was a double L. So I would have pronounced it legando.
That’s all for the first phase : just listen.
2. Sing along
Once you have a good idea of how it’s supposed to sound, start to sing along.
I find that it’s important not to start singing along too soon. Or else you risk making your brain hear what the person is not singing.
And if you’re not a musician, or if you are not a good singer, it doesn’t matter. But of course it helps if you enjoy it.
Focus on the pronunciation rather than the notes.
Play with the sounds in your mouth. I find that getting the right pronunciation often is a trick of where you place your tongue.
Personally, I adore singing, so this was not a problem.
3. Divide the song in pieces
After I sang along, two three or four times, I decided how I’m going to divide the song.
Usually on a song, there are specific parts : verse, chorus, second verse, chorus, sometimes a bridge, and then a final chorus.
In my case, I decided to focus on half of the first verse first. And I started singing it without the song.
Singing it at this stage, without the song, helps you understand if you actually have memorized the sounds or if you just are mumbling along with the song when it plays.
4. Record once, and get feedback
Once you can sing this first little part, it’s important to get feedback.
Because you might be making big mistakes, and you don’t want to make those mistakes throughout the whole song.
So I reached out to my friend Jonathan, and I asked him if what I was saying, was correct. He told me that it was mostly okay, but that I wasn’t pronouncing the D and T right. And he coached me into how to pronounce them better.
After I confirmed that I understood what he meant, and that I was pronouncing it better, I went back to the first part and tried it again.
5. If you can, ask for someone to record the lyrics while speaking slowly
Something else I asked Jonathan to do is to record the lyrics in a speaking voice. That was very funny because he was actually half singing it.
This recording of him, I used it when I wasn’t sure what the singer was singing. Sometimes, when you sing, you have to modify the vowels a little bit to be able to sing certain notes. So having the speaking voice and the singing voice was very helpful.
6. Focus on the difficult parts
At this stage, I just simply gave myself to this song and started singing it completely.
Focusing on the difficult parts of the song. The places where it’s going too fast for you, or you’re not quite sure how the syllables are supposed to go one after another, or you just always mess it up.
And if you hear the final recording (and know Spanish), you’ll hear which parts were tricky for me.
7. Record again
Eventually, I recorded the song again and send it back to Jonathan for feedback. And whatever he is going to say to me, I’m going to keep working on. He hasn’t replied yet.
But I want it to be as close to perfect as possible.
So this last part could go on and on forever. Either way, I’m having fun, and I’m quite proud of myself.
You can listen to me singing it in the podcast version of this article, over on Spotify (or Apple podcast, or Google, or whenever you listen to your podcasts usually).
I also invite you to join the Sunday French newsletter. I sent an email every Sunday entirely in French with a little text, vocabulary, recommendations, and more tips on how to learn French.
