{"id":5202,"date":"2011-05-25T10:15:56","date_gmt":"2011-05-25T10:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=5202"},"modified":"2011-05-25T10:15:56","modified_gmt":"2011-05-25T10:15:56","slug":"lightbulb-moments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=5202","title":{"rendered":"Lightbulb moments"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Light<\/p>\n

Yesterday while we were singing La Bamba<\/em> at the ukulele club the words started to make sense to me. I’d picked up some of them through repeated listening, but had never bothered to learn them before this week. Now I not only know the words, but also what they mean. Often with songs in languages other than English I might know the meaning of at least some of the words, but I don’t always grasp their exact meaning. <\/p>\n

In the case of La Bamba<\/em>, the lyrics that started to make sense to me last night were:<\/p>\n

Para bailar la bamba (in order to dance the bamba)<\/em>
\nPara bailar la bamba (in order to dance the bamba)<\/em>
\nSe necesita una poca de gracia (you need a little bit of grace)<\/em>
\nUna poca de gracia para mi para ti (a little bit of grace for me for you)<\/em>
\nY arriba y arriba – wasn’t sure about this bit – have now discovered that it means “faster, faster” or “higher, higher”<\/em>
\nAy arriba y arriba
\nPor ti sere, por ti sere, por ti sere (for you I will be, for you I will be)<\/em><\/p>\n

Yo no soy marinero (I’m not a sailor)<\/em>
\nYo no soy marinero, soy capitan (I’m not a sailor, I’m a captain)<\/em>
\nSoy capitan, soy capitan (I’m a captain, I’m a captain)<\/em><\/p>\n

Source: http:\/\/www.lyricsmania.com\/la_bamba_lyrics_los_lobos.html<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This happens with songs in Welsh and Irish, and occasionally other languages as well, especially with songs I’ve heard many times – the meaning of a word, a line or even a whole verse suddenly becomes blindingly obvious and I wonder why I never realised what it meant before. It doesn’t help that it can be tricky to hear the words of songs clearly and that I don’t always listen to them very attentively, but sometimes when a word I’ve heard and understood in another context pops up in a song, it might help me understand some of the other parts of the song. <\/p>\n

I think that the brain works away subconsciously trying to make sense of things, and when it has a solution, the conscience lights up like a light bulb. It’s moments like that that make language learning an exciting and rewarding adventure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday while we were singing La Bamba at the ukulele club the words started to make sense to me. I’d picked up some of them through repeated listening, but had never bothered to learn them before this week. Now I not only know the words, but also what they mean. Often with songs in languages […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127,10,64,77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-irish","category-language","category-spanish","category-welsh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}