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An interesting use of radio.

B

BOZ Profit

Guest
Using radio as a means of teaching another language by playing an English version of a song on the left channel and the version in another language on the right channel. Yes, if you have a mono receiver, it could be problematic. But apparently it is being done: How likely will this idea catch on in the US?
 
Seems like an idea that's better suited to the Internet. I could understand launching something like this a few decades ago but not now.

From a technical standpoint many radios don't have pan controls (or people don't know where they are) and multiplexing doesn't guarantee great channel separation.

From a programming standpoint it requires concentration which is not the way radio is generally used -- in a car, for example. And once the listener has "learned" a song they won't likely want to hear the multilingual version again so it's hard to see how this could "build" an audience.
 
Most ESL people who have learned English via radio or TV report just viewing/listening to English language programming to learn. Both my foreign born daughters learned English this way as a fair amount of their TV viewing and radio song listening was in English.

Personally, I would think trying to learn a foreign language via a stereo broadcast would be very difficult as there is not a one-for-one word translation between most languages. For instance, the proper syntax for a given sentence in Spanish is "backwards" to English speakers so the individual words don't match. You need to learn both the individual words and their proper place in the syntax.

It is fairly easy to "learn" how to sing a song in a foreign language but that doesn't necessarily give you the proper knowledge to speak or understand it.

I'm sure every American kid knows the words to "farashaka" but how many remember the translation?
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Music and poetry don't translate literally. Often the same idea was re-written in the new language. I would say that would be a poor way to learn, even if technically feasable.

I listened to a lot of Spanish on tropical band shortwave stations in the 70s. I learned the language well enough to hold a conversation with a Spanish speaker (even though my grades in Spanish class didn't reflect it). Today I'd tell someone to start by listening to the Spanish (or whatever) language SAP on a favorite movie, then watch a lot of Telemundo.
 
There is a song, I'm not sure of the title, that came out a year or so ago that has two songs on the same track. One song on the left and a different one on the left. Since both are in the same key, tempo and chord changes you can play both at the same time. It was made that way because kids are bad about listening through only one earbud and sharing the other earbud. each person hears a different song. The way the songs are arranged and are in sync, if you listen through both channels you will actually hear a third song with both songs arranged and merged together. I'd like to hear it but I don't know the name. Did anyone read about this?
 
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