How to Learn a Language the Way You Learn a Musical Instrument

Contents

• Like Learning a Musical Instrument

• Chunking

• Muscle Memory

• Getting into the habit

• We aren’t as original as we think

It is said that music and languages have a lot in common with each other. That both are processed in the same part of the brain even.

I also see the connection in that both are tools conveying emotion and meaning. It’s a way for us to communicate and connect with each other.

I have an extensive background as a musician. I studied jazz performance at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm as well as playing and touring with various artists and bands as a drummer (and background vocalist). I studied music pedagogy too.

I spent a lot of time practicing my instrument when I grew up. Every day after school I would go home and get in 1-2 hours of practice before dinner and this went on until I was 25 years old. With some seasons even reaching 6-8 hours per day. It was my obsession.

I even ended up picking up the guitar in my late 20s.

Like learning a musical instrument

When I started deliberately learning foreign languages I realized that learning a language is a lot like learning an instrument. There are so many of the mindsets and just sheer mechanics that are so similar.

When you hear a masterful jazz musician on stage and playing this totally improvised solo it leaves many people dumbfounded how someone can have that kind of command and fluency in their playing.

And in the same way our jaws drop when someone has mastered a language and just deliver words and phrases that flow out like water with complete ease.

How did they arrive at this level of fluency at their instrument or speaking a language?

What I’ve found is that there are 2 main things that will get you there:

Chunking and Muscle Memory

And they are both very much connected to each other.

Chunking

I got the term “chunking” from Donovan from the amazing language blog The Mezzofanti Guild. Although without knowing the term it’s something that I have personally used from the very start of my Cantonese learning. And it’s something that can be applied to any language.

What chunking basically means is that you’re learning the language in ”chunks” or sentences and phrases, instead of just individual words. And you then take these and chunks of language and repeat them until they become second nature.

When we are able to speak a language fluently it’s because we are not thinking in terms of individual words but rather ”blocks” or ”chunks” and lines of thoughts. We’re speaking in full phrases and sentences not isolated words. 

How to practically do this

How I did this with Cantonese is that I would have sentences in the flashcard app Anki. I would have the audio to those phrases on every Anki flashcard so as soon as that card appeared the audio would play.

I would then repeat what I heard in the audio. I started slow and tried to build up speed more and more - which happens naturally the easier and easier it gets to say the sentences.

Another way I did it was by using the program Transcribe. It’s a program that makes it very easy to loop and speed up and down audio without changing the pitch. I like it because it’s the simplest easiest that I’ve found, but I’m sure there are other similar programs out there too.

I would use Transcribe to practice this chunking method to improve mostly my listening, but you can do it with speaking too. Getting used to hearing these phrases by looping them and listening them on repeat.

I have done the same countless times to figure out what was played on the guitar or drums in a particular song. I just applied same methods to learning a language.

This was massively beneficial because all speaking is - is stringing those phrases together to form complete speech. Just as a musician takes shorter chunks on his or her instrument to form a long flowing melody line or solo.

If it’s too fast then slow it down and just repeat it and slowly increase the speed as you get more and more comfortable.

Just repeat the isolated part until you can clearly hear it and then be able to say it with a natural flow.

The idea is just to take a chunk of language and work with that until it becomes second nature. And the more chunks you learn the better you will speak.

Muscle memory

When learning to play an instrument there is a lot of repetition that we do in order to get things into our ”muscle memory”.

By doing so - we are able to play notes and phrases effortlessly without thinking. We no longer think about the individual notes we play. It’s just a feeling or physical sensation that we’re tapping into and out flows what we’ve programmed our fingers, hands (and feet if you’re a drummer) to do. 

And in the case of singing or speaking - our voices.

Speaking a language is very much the same thing. You can take a chunk of speech of maybe 3-10 words and say it over and over again. Practicing it. Listening to it. Mimicking. Listening again. Saying it. Repeat.

After you’ve done this for a while this phrase becomes easy to say. Effortless. And by just continuing to do that with more and more phrases you’ll find that the words start rolling off your tongue easier and easier in your target language.

Muscle memory is quite amazing as I sometimes don’t play drums for many many months. But when I sit down it’s still all there and I’m sometimes surprised of what I’m able to play.

It’s like my arms and feet live a life on their own. But they have just been conditioned for years to perform what I’ve wanted them to perform but tons of repetition into muscle memory.

A language is no different - which I’ve experienced many times when I haven’t spoken a language for a long time but it’s still all there.

Getting into the habit

Like I mentioned earlier I started practicing drums very early on every single day. And when I started learning languages I brought the mindset of “I do this every day” into the picture.

Even though I started my language learning with maybe 10-15 mins per day I made sure I did it every single day. Without fail. It was a combination of a strong desire as well as creating routines that I knew was serving where I wanted to be in the future.

I don’t think I have missed a single day of Cantonese since I started around 3.5 years ago. Apart from maybe my Honeymoon. But we did go to Hong Kong where I got to speak Cantonese every day so I’m not sure if that counts (haha).

Programming our muscle memories takes time and repetition. And the more often we do it the easier it is for our hands, fingers, feet or voices to perform what we desire them to. So by doing it often rather than a lot at just one time it faster becomes automatic and effortless.

We aren’t as original as we think

We think often that when people talk it’s something original. Or when they play something on an instrument it’s something they came up with themselves.

And while there is truth to that, most of what we speak is something we’ve heard someone else say. It just gets filtered through our personality and way of expressing ourselves.

This is actually good news as it takes a lot of the mystery out from learning a language.

We mimic what we hear others say and when we get to a high enough level then we can start putting our own spin on things. 

I used to do this as a drummer and listen to albums of my favorite drummer and try and play exactly what they played. And as I got better I put more of my own flavour on things. Coming up with my own stuff. But there needs to be a strong foundation for that kind of a freedom to be able to happen.

This is where we want to get in our language ability. I will say the difference between music and languages is that becoming proficient on an instrument in general takes way longer than learning a language. At least for me personally.

Learning a language is not as hard as we think and by understanding chunking and muscle memory we can break things down in bite-size easily digestible pieces. It both removes the overwhelm and it’s a quite meditative and therapeutic experience.

It’s quite relaxing and a much more natural way to learn than trying to force something. You just let the time and repetition work for you to bring you the results you want.

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Have you ever tried some kind of musical approach to language learning?

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