Victoria
The scene: a Japanese exchange student studying abroad in some unnamed country goes to a live performance of a band that plays a song called “You Gotta Stay”. However, the student mishears this song title as “Ryuugakusei”, meaning “exchange student”. The rest of the song plays out similarly, with the English lyrics being a rather unoriginal love song but the Japanese interpretation being the story of a Japanese exchange student acclimatizing to life abroad. For instance, from the chorus:
“You gotta stay” – “Ryuugakusei” (Exchange student)
“Hey, I need you here, babe” – “Heya nijuu hei bei” (The room is 20m2)
“It’s better never talkin’ ‘cause it’s no good” – “Beddo ni neru toki kutsu nugu” (Take off your shoes when you sleep in bed)
“You gotta stay” – “Ryuugakusei” (Exchange student)
“Hey, I need you here, babe” – “Heya nijuu hei bei” (The room is 20m2)
“I messed up, should’ve known last time I met ya!” – “Miso shiru nomitai wa meccha” (I really want to drink miso soup)
While mishearing lyrics has long been a fun feature listening to music in one’s own language (think Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “there’s a bad moon on the rise” infamously being mistaken for “there’s a bathroom on the right”), this song is an interesting example of how listening to music, particularly that in a language that perhaps not fluently understood by the listener, can result in some amusingly different messages. In the video linked above, the guest artist playing the exchange student is a relatively new figure on the Japanese music scene named Okazaki Taiiku. In other songs, such as one called “Natural Lips”, he slurs and manipulates his Japanese words in a way that makes them sound something like English (complete with English style ‘-r’ sounds that are notoriously difficult for Japanese speakers), but ultimately, the song becomes almost impossible to understand without reading the subtitles simultaneously, as the title card at the beginning warns. For further context, the band behind “Ryuugakusei” is a Canadian-Japanese hybrid outfit called Monkey Majik which features two brothers from Ottawa who originally came to Japan to teach English and hit mainstream success as a band there in 2006. Their songs are typically a mix of English and Japanese, though not in this way.
Japanese music is well known for including English in its lyrics, this thought to be the result of English’s status as the current dominant world language. However, while English is a core subject for all school students starting from age 12, many people are reluctant to use their English in part due to a lack of focus on communication skills in these lessons. As a result, the English in music is often unintelligible or inserted at random, perhaps for the “cool” factor rather than any sort of communicative purpose. As a result, in my opinion, this English is rarely listened to or considered by the average listener. Okazaki Taiiku instead encourages active listening by overusing ‘r’ sounds and employing English-like pronunciation of both Japanese and English, the latter being something that many Japanese English learners shy away from out of embarrassment but perhaps might be encouraged by musicians like this normalizing playing around with mouth shapes and tongue placement. On a similar note, English singers showing Japanese listeners that English lyrics don’t have to be gibberish or beyond understanding could be a helpful nudge to get people trying to listen more actively to the music they consume or to perhaps seek out more music to practice their listening on.
During my time teaching, some of my students were reluctant to listen to Western music because of the language barrier, so songs like this may help listeners to see that the divide between Japanese and English is not as strict or insurmountable as they might think. Playing around with language and pronunciation is something that I think many of us could stand to do in our learning journeys to take some of the edge off, so I hope that educators will make use of media like this to spur learners into equating trial and error with fun.
