MM Lesson: Rap, Rhyming and Parts of Speech
As you have probably noticed by now, I place a lot of emphasis on rap music in The Mimic Method. This is not a matter of personal preference (though I do admit a bias); there are several practical reasons why rapping is superior to singing as a tool for acquiring second language flow. The most obvious advantage rap has over singing is speed. Melodic songs are typically slower than both rap and normal speech. It's certainly helpful to learn sung lyrics, but whatever phonetic infrastructure you learn from a slow melodic song will eventually have to be sped up to match the speeds of normal conversation.
But its possible to have a fast melodic song as well. The Seu Jorge song "Carolina" is a perfect example of that. The song had a melody, but the speed of the syllables was on par with that of any rap song (which is why I included it in the curriculum in the first place). One could argue that this song was a sort of "melodic rap" song, but rap is certainly not the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the song. There has to be something else besides speed that separates rap from other forms of musical speech.
But its possible to have a fast melodic song as well. The Seu Jorge song "Carolina" is a perfect example of that. The song had a melody, but the speed of the syllables was on par with that of any rap song (which is why I included it in the curriculum in the first place). One could argue that this song was a sort of "melodic rap" song, but rap is certainly not the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the song. There has to be something else besides speed that separates rap from other forms of musical speech.
Rhyming and Phonological Awareness
Now that you have a few song lyrics memorized, you are probably feeling more comfortable with the component sounds of Portuguese. When you first begin a language, it seems like there are so many strange sounds, but now you are realizing that there's really only a handful of possible sounds to use, and the combinations that those sound occur it are limited as well. Moreover, you are now starting to distinguish those sounds more easily and automatically. This ability to appreciate and identify the component sounds of a given language is called "Phonological Awareness," and it is the most important element of Language Flow Mastery.
We develop Phonological Awareness through "statistical learning," which is the unconscious cognitive process of recognizing patterns with enough exposure to the system. As mentioned before, the component sounds of Portuguese occur only in certain patterns, and with enough exposure to Portuguese speech, your brain will automatically start to recognize these patterns and rely on them for processing Portuguese speech at super-fast speeds.
Since it's all based on pattern-recognition, all your brain needs is enough exposure to the system to start recognizing the patterns. This pattern-recognition process, however, can be sped up a great deal if you expose your real world examples that happen to highlight these patterns.
Returning to our previous discussion, one characteristic feature of rap is the abundance of rhyming words. There is certainly rhyming in "Carolina," but it's not really central to the musical aesthetic. In contrast, rhyming is the most stand-out feature of "Us Playboys." By hearing these sound patterns repeated several times through rhyme, you are accelerating the development of your Phonological Awareness. Essentially, you are giving your brain several chances to make out the acoustic nuances of a sound combinations that apparently occur frequently in that language.
We develop Phonological Awareness through "statistical learning," which is the unconscious cognitive process of recognizing patterns with enough exposure to the system. As mentioned before, the component sounds of Portuguese occur only in certain patterns, and with enough exposure to Portuguese speech, your brain will automatically start to recognize these patterns and rely on them for processing Portuguese speech at super-fast speeds.
Since it's all based on pattern-recognition, all your brain needs is enough exposure to the system to start recognizing the patterns. This pattern-recognition process, however, can be sped up a great deal if you expose your real world examples that happen to highlight these patterns.
Returning to our previous discussion, one characteristic feature of rap is the abundance of rhyming words. There is certainly rhyming in "Carolina," but it's not really central to the musical aesthetic. In contrast, rhyming is the most stand-out feature of "Us Playboys." By hearing these sound patterns repeated several times through rhyme, you are accelerating the development of your Phonological Awareness. Essentially, you are giving your brain several chances to make out the acoustic nuances of a sound combinations that apparently occur frequently in that language.
Phonological Patterns of Parts of Speech
If you recall from 5th grade English class, a "part of speech" is a classification of words according to how they are used in a sentence and the types of ideas they convey. So for example, you can tell that "violence" and "resilience" are both nouns by the fact that they have the "-ence" suffix. Recognizing this pattern, you automatically know what part of speech the completely made-up word, "Maverence," would be just by hearing it.
Not surprisingly, words of the same category are likelier to rhyme (e.g. snowing, glowing, blowing, growing, etc.). Fortunately for Portuguese rappers, almost all Portuguese words within the same category rhyme with one another. So listening to studying rap not only ingrains phonetic patterns in your brain, but it ingrains grammatical patterns as well.
Not surprisingly, words of the same category are likelier to rhyme (e.g. snowing, glowing, blowing, growing, etc.). Fortunately for Portuguese rappers, almost all Portuguese words within the same category rhyme with one another. So listening to studying rap not only ingrains phonetic patterns in your brain, but it ingrains grammatical patterns as well.
Us Playboy
In this song, Rappin Hood does a lot of rhyming of words of the same part of speech. For both of the lessons of this unit, the final syllable will always be the same, as will the vowel sound of the second to last syllable. You will also notice that the rhythm pattern is the same for all of these lines too. This rhythm patterns is not just unique to the song, but characteristic of all forms of Brazilian Portuguese, as we will study in more detail in a later lesson.
