シャドーイング練習: Chinese Music - It's Not Dead, It's Misunderstood... - YouTubeで英語スピーキングを学ぶ
C1
シャドーイング コントロール
0% 完了 (0/199 文)
Even if you live in the West, you've probably heard of this song.
⏸ 一時停止中
再生速度:
リピート回数:
待機モード:
字幕同期:0ms
すべての文199 文
1
Even if you live in the West, you've probably heard of this song.
2
Or this song.
3
But unless you live in these countries in East Asia, or understand the language, you've probably never heard of this.
4
That's because what you're listening to is CPOP.
5
And it's dead.
6
There's even a whole video essay about it.
7
In it, it argues that the TikTokification and attempts to copy the K-pop industry has caused detriment to the CPOP scene.
8
That sayings like CPOP is doomed or CPOP has flopped have been spreading all over Chinese Twitter.
9
I'll link the video down below.
10
It's a great video.
11
So it seems to be common consensus now that CPOP is dead.
12
Or is it?
13
Because to answer, is CPOP dead?
14
You first have to answer, what is CPOP?
15
Seems straightforward because the clue's in the name, but the problem with separating genres with language is we end up taking into the genre everything else that doesn't fit.
16
For instance, you'd rarely see people consider this to be K-pop.
17
Or this.
18
is.
19
If we take a look at CPOP, we get the exact same problem.
20
Not everything in Chinese is considered CPOP.
21
To make matters more confusing, Chinese pop is split into every dialect that uses Chinese.
22
So when we sing there's Cantonese pop, Mandarin pop, Hokkien pop, the list goes on.
23
All that's fine because it still doesn't change the fact that it needs to be in a Chinese dialect to be CPOP.
24
But if we want to define the genre, there has to be a better way.
25
Instead of just looking at the music, it's worth considering everything else that surrounds it.
26
Take K-pop for example.
27
You generally have an easier time defining it if you factor in its idol culture.
28
In fact, I'd say it's the key difference between K-pop and other Korean music.
29
That's why one song can get remade twice.
30
And while one is considered K-pop, the other one isn't.
31
It's also interesting to note that these two songs were released within days of each other.
32
Even if we look at J-pop, we get more or less the same analogy.
33
There's a plethora of talented musicians out there making great songs in Japan, but if you were to name a J-pop song off the top of your head right now, there's a good to fair chance that it's an anime theme song.
34
Okay, cool, now we're getting somewhere.
35
Let's try to define CPOP by its global driving force.
36
K-pop has their idols, J-pop has their anime, and we have...
37
I don't...
38
I don't know what we have.
39
And that's the first problem.
40
CPOP has great music, but what we lack is a musical vessel like everyone else to influence the world.
41
And you know what sucks?
42
We used to have the biggest one.
43
Fei Wang, she's the best.
44
I don't know anybody who hasn't seen this movie that hasn't gotten a crush on her.
45
That's right, 80s and 90s Hong Kong cinema.
46
The films that made everyone think all Chinese people know kung fu, drive stunt cars and smoke cigarettes and sunglasses.
47
On top of that, they also drummed their theme songs into every head that fell in love with the movies.
48
Those were
49
the days.
50
Those were the days.
51
Well, shit.
52
One financial crisis, a handover ceremony and a SARS pandemic later, the Hong Kong film industry disappeared from the global spotlight in under a decade, along with its iconic theme songs.
53
But that can't be it.
54
That's just Hong Kong.
55
CPOP is made in China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, and everywhere that uses its dialects.
56
It must be something else.
57
Let's listen to more theme songs.
58
How在我们从不必说明什么...
59
Not as a pattern?
60
No?
61
Let's keep going.
62
Still nothing?
63
Let me give you a hint.
64
They are all ballads.
65
Now, I know what you must be saying.
66
Ballads are a very common choice for movie theme songs, even in the West.
67
And you're right.
68
But over here, this shit spreads way beyond the movie theaters.
69
If we flashback to this video where it all started, this screenshot of the top 10 charts on QQ Music where the commentator used to point out how old the songs are.
70
Something really strange lies here.
71
7 out of these 10 songs were released 10 years ago.
72
Oh yeah, that's strange.
73
You know what's more strange?
74
You know what's even more fucked up in this screenshot?
75
9 out of these 10 songs are ballads.
76
Make no mistake, you are looking at one of the most ballad-heavy music ecosystems in the world.
77
Now, to the outsider, it might sound weird that our charts are topped by depressing breakup songs.
78
But for some reason we love it.
79
We love singing them in karaoke's and birthday parties Even in weddings, which is kind of fucked up,
80
but whatever But the popularity of ballads in CPOP is not without its reasons The main one is because Chinese dialects are spoken with tones,
81
a mechanic that's neither present in Korean, Japanese,
82
nor English Some Chinese dialects like Cantonese have up to nine tones So our language family already has musicality built into it In tonal languages words must be intonated the right way in relation with other words to preserve its meaning
83
And so songwriters and composers in CPOP have to work extra hard to create melodies and lyrics that marry each other flawlessly.
84
For instance, here's a line of a very popular Cantonese pop song without its melody.
85
So if I have to find a tune that fits this line, what can I do?
86
Well, let's start with the easy part.
87
The first two words are identical.
88
This is because in Chinese dialects, it's very common to double up a word to strengthen its meaning.
89
For example, 天 means day, and 天天 means everyday.
90
听 means listen, and 听听 means listen carefully.
91
So you would think if 痛 means pain, then 痛痛 means it really hurts.
92
But instead it's used like this.
93
I fucking love this language.
94
Anyway, as you can imagine, in Canto Pop, it's very common for double words to have either identical or similar notes in music to avoid confusion.
95
So in our case, we can just do this.
96
The second part, 頭上, actually starts with identical tone as the two words before.
97
But because in context, this is a separate phrase, we can get away by not mapping it to the same notes.
98
That being said, it still requires a rising tone to preserve its meaning.
99
Like this.
100
The last part is actually a little tricky, because the words fei, fa are actually in the highest tone bracket in Cantonese.
101
Meaning, once you've set the word fei, you can't follow it up with any other word that goes higher.
102
It won't mean anything.
103
So in music, having an ascending interval for these two words might cause confusion.
104
But there's a catch.
105
For one, unlike the first example, these aren't identical words.
106
So a slight deviation won't hurt.
107
Also, context matters.
108
This is actually a very common phrase in poetry, so it's less likely to be misheard.
109
And lastly, there's nothing to be misheard for.
110
The word fa is actually one of the only two terms that exist for this particular syllable, meaning you can only say the word fa in two ways.
111
The only other way that makes sense, fa, doesn't make any sense when combined with the first word.
112
Because of that, you can actually take quite a bit of musical liberty for these two words, like this.
113
And now with all these considerations put together, we finally turn this line into music.
114
And this laborious process that's unique to CPOP
115
results in some of the most sophisticated music there is in
116
the world Even world-class singers have trouble keeping up I'm so sorry to hear the melody.
117
I'm so sorry to hear the melody.
118
It's not a melody, but it's not a melody.
119
It's so beautiful to move on and move on.
120
If I take this last part of the line and just say it as is, you can almost hear the melody of the final song.
121
So, If
122
this sounds like a songwriter's nightmare to you, keep in mind that this level of tone melody correspondence is far more stringent in Cantonese than in Mandarin.
123
This is a 2023 study done by a professor for spoken language processing in the University of Munich.
124
In their test, they selected nine pairs of C-pop songs which have both Mandarin and Cantonese versions and compared the lyrics to see how well the natural tones of both dialects map onto the same melody.
125
The result?
126
Cantonese versions were consistently more tone sensitive than the Mandarin counterparts, with 77% of the lyrics matching the melody, while the Mandarin versions only matched 38%.
127
That being said, the songs used for these tests are all over 10 years old, some are even pushing 20 years old.
128
Since then we've become much more accustomed to songwriters taking liberty by going off tone.
129
But the one big takeaway remains undisputed.
130
Chinese dialects are perfect for ballads.
131
All this sounds great, but what if a gift from the tones that the ballad gods have given us is now actively fighting against the songwriters in just about every other genre?
132
Just think about how hard it is to write a Cantonese EDM for example.
133
The point of EDM is that the melody is supposed to be simple and catchy, like this.
134
But if this chorus was in Cantonese, you'd have to find five words in either identical or at least similar tones to put them there.
135
They have to make sense, they have to rhyme a second time, and they have to be about pasta, which isn't that nuance of an idea in the first place.
136
But even the word pasta are in two different tones, so you're fucked from the get-go.
137
That being said, it doesn't mean we don't have catchy dance music, it just means we have to work around it.
138
For example, what if you have to write a song for a canto pop idol?
139
Well one thing you can do is to start the song in Cantonese, and then switch to English for the chorus.
140
Another way to do it is to not have lyrics for the chorus at all.
141
Hip-hop is another great example.
142
In English, for instance, hip-hop artists are known to use tones to create rhythm and emphases on certain words in the lyrics.
143
Like this.
144
Girl, I can buy a Westy girl with my bass dub.
145
Ooh, that pussy good, won't you sit it on my taste buds.
146
What you're listening to specifically is something called the phrase final declination.
147
It refers to a phenomenon in speech where the pitch of a voice drops significantly as it reaches the end of a sentence.
148
If English is your first language, you probably do this a lot without even thinking about it.
149
Unsurprisingly, this technique has become a large part of rap music.
150
His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, There's vomit on his sweater already.
151
Mom's spaghetti, he's nervous.
152
But when hip-hop got introduced into Chinese music, things got complicated.
153
Let's look at Mandarin.
154
As mentioned before, for a sentence to achieve phrase final declination, you have to pitch down at the end of a line.
155
But in all four tones of Mandarin, only the fourth and the occasional neutral tone can achieve a low intonation at the end of a syllable.
156
Ma, ma, ma, ma, ma.
157
Not only that, the fourth tone's pitch doesn't stay constant.
158
It's what we refer to as a contour tone, where the voice has to pitch up and down within a single syllable.
159
Ma.
160
And because unlike Cantonese, where there are multiple tones that stay relatively low and flat, Mandarin hip-hop relies heavily on its fourth tone to achieve phrase final declination.
161
But I'm in the group of people I'm in the middle of the world I'm in the middle of the world As you can imagine, not having the whole vocabulary available becomes limiting for the songwriters So if you want to write a Mandarin hip-hop song, what can you do?
162
Well, like in Canto Pop, one thing you can do is to just substitute the line ending syllables with English
163
Granted that a good portion of the reason is to cater to an international audience, according to a 2023 study published by the Journal of New Music Research,
164
out of a sample size of 34 modern Mandarin trap style rap music, English words account for 32% of all line ending syllables.
165
It's an elegant solution.
166
But what if you don't want English lyrics, you don't want to work with tonal constraints, and yet you still want to make catchy Chinese music?
167
Well, your only other option is to be this guy.
168
I think it's just a mistake.
169
Don't try to understand it.
170
Feel it.
171
You
172
know what,
173
at this point I'm convinced that even he doesn't know what the fuck he's singing about.
174
Now, you may be asking, if J-Chi was able to sing past all of the tonal obstacles by simply mumbling and slurring through lyrics, why can't everybody do it?
175
And the answer is simple.
176
So, if we take a step back, we start to see the full picture.
177
Why is it hard to make Chinese music?
178
Well because Chinese is music.
179
And considering where the trend is taking us, the linguistic structure of Chinese dialects makes it hard for songwriters and composers to produce music that's simple and catchy, an important ingredient for worldwide success on the international stage.
180
And that's understandable.
181
Pop songs, by definition, are popular songs.
182
And it's hard to imagine an international audience going to a music festival like Coachella, expecting to have a good time, and then play them a sad ballad.
183
But does that mean it's dead?
184
Not really.
185
Because international success doesn't matter.
186
popularity has never been an indication of quality.
187
The fact that CPOP is failing to copy K-pop is a good thing, because we already have K-pop.
188
But it also doesn't mean CPOP can't evolve.
189
Indie rock, hip-hop and R&B artists are pushing the boundaries every single day.
190
It's just going to take more trial and error to traverse our beautifully complex language.
191
Maybe CPOP will one day get the spotlight on the international stage, be it in its current form or an amalgamation of what's coming next.
192
But if it doesn't, so what?
193
It just means it's not for everyone.
194
It's for us.
195
I've always wanted to do some with the Japanese movie or Japanese music and the Japanese movie.
196
It's a shame that this channel is always working on the English.
197
I've never found a chance.
198
I hope you can support this video and support more Japanese viewers.
199
If you like this video, please like and subscribe We'll see you next time
App StoreとGoogle Playで4.9/5
Shadowing English
モバイル版
Shadowing Englishアプリでいつでもどこでも英語を学びましょう。 今すぐコミュニケーションスキルを向上させましょう！
学習の進捗を追跡する
AIによる採点とエラー修正
豊富な動画ライブラリ
なぜこの動画で話す練習をするべきか？
この動画は、CPOP（中国ポップ音楽）の現状についての興味深い視点を提供しています。英語スピーキング練習として、この動画を活用することで、音楽や文化に関する話題を通じて表現力を豊かにし、自分の意見を英語でしっかりと伝える力を養えます。また、音楽に関連したコンテンツは、多くの英語学習者にとって親しみやすいテーマであり、学ぶ意欲を高めるのに役立ちます。英語のスピーキング力を向上させるためには、実際の会話の中で自分の意見を述べることが重要です。特に、IELTS スピーキング対策などを考えている方には、非常に有益な練習となるでしょう。
文法と表現の文脈
この動画の中で使われる重要な文法構造や表現を分析すると、以下のようなものがあります：
- 「Seems to be common consensus」 - これは、「一般的な合意のようです」という意味で、話題についての最新の見解を述べる際によく使われる表現です。
- 「We end up taking into the genre everything else that doesn't fit」 - この文では、特定のジャンルを定義する際の難しさを説明しています。このような構文は、複雑な概念を明確に表現するのに役立ちます。
- 「That's why one song can get remade twice」 - 因果関係を明示するために用いる表現で、物事の理由を述べる場面で非常に便利です。
一般的な発音の罠
この動画の中で注意が必要な発音やアクセントのポイントとして、以下の言葉を挙げられます：
- 「CPOP」 - 発音時に「シーポップ」と言うのが一般的ですが、この言葉が正確に響くように練習しましょう。
- 「TikTokification」 - この造語は、リズムと音の流れに注意しながら発音することが求められます。
- 「K-pop」 - これは使われる頻度が高いため、特に言及する際の発音にも気をつけましょう。
これらのポイントに注意することで、英語の発音を良くするための一助となります。動画を見ながら、ぜひ一緒に発音練習をしてみてください。
シャドーイングとは？英語上達に効果的な理由
シャドーイング（Shadowing）は、もともとプロの通訳者養成プログラムで開発された言語学習法で、多言語習得者として知られるDr. Alexander Arguelles によって広く普及されました。方法はシンプルですが非常に効果的：ネイティブスピーカーの英語を聞きながら、1〜2秒の遅延で声に出してすぐに繰り返す——まるで「影（shadow）」のように話者を追いかけます。文法ドリルや受動的なリスニングと異なり、シャドーイングは脳と口の筋肉が同時にリアルタイムで英語を処理・再現することを強制します。研究により、発音精度、抑揚、リズム、連音、リスニング力、そして会話の流暢さが大幅に向上することが確認されています。IELTSスピーキング対策や自然な英語コミュニケーションを目指す方に特におすすめです。