YOU KNOW YOU ARE A CANTONESE LOVER WHEN…

I recently came across a thread in a language forum that discussed the peculiar characteristics of language lovers. One post that really caught my attention was one that said that you really know you are a language lover when you find yourself listening to music in your target language that you never would in your mother tongue just for the sake of learning it .And in the end you even wind up liking it!

I think this is very true, at least from my experience. Nevertheless, by that I don’t mean that those who don’t listen to music in their target language are not serious and passionate about learning it, but just that in trying to absorb the language you find that it has a particular and especial beauty that even the most trivial – and sometimes atrocious – things have a certain charm and musicality. And that leads you to doing certain things you wouldn’t normally do, such as listening to Cantopop!

Ok, I said it. I listen to Cantopop. Generally speaking, I think Cantopop, if it was not in Cantonese, would fit the atrocious category I mentioned before. I certainly would not listen to it if it was in any other language. But since Cantonese is so enchanting and exuberant you find that even some pretty lame songs have a certain beauty – that’s not true for all of them, of course. Some songs are so lame that no language in the world could make them pleasant to listen to in any way. Twins, for instance, is just horrible no matter what.

With that being said, I think it would be interesting to just post a few Cantopop songs that I listen to – and, alas, like! Not all of them are lame. Some of them are even good and I would even listen to them in English. In fact, generally speaking, I tried to pick the crème de la crème, as the French would say. I hope you will like them. So without further ado, here is my list :

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=Axpx-fxvts4

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=m14J9mxfAO4

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EUC-tiKNPY

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCN2m2WJskQ

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQkREAVpCOo

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdTQosNnMmQ

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlqfgW24TQU

//www.songtaste.com/song/635892/