Reggaeton is sending China wild — and it's teaching college students Spanish
Reggaeton music has conquered the world, but it’s being put to a different use in China: students are using the strains of J Balvin to help them learn Spanish.
Little-known artists have long bragged that they’re “big in Japan,” but a Spanish-language musical juggernaut is sweeping a much bigger market across the East China Sea.
With its Latin beats and pulsating rhythms, reggaeton music has conquered dance floors across the world, but it’s being put to a different use in China: college students are using the strains of J Balvin and Bad Bunny to help them learn Spanish.
According to a study from Barcelona’s Universitat Pompeu Fabra, the number of Chinese students taking its translation and language science classes has risen 37% from five years ago, but China’s formal educational resources for learning Spanish are far less developed than they are for learning English.
Bad Bunny performs in Los Angeles last month.Kevin Winter / Getty ImagesInstead, students are turning to social media sites and streaming services such as NetEase Cloud Music (NECM) to engage with digital language content, with translations of reggaeton songs garnering millions of views on the platform.
The UPF study, which was published last month in the journal “Language and Intercultural Communication,” says that amateur translators often collaborate with Latin music lovers on the popular streaming site, using various “intercultural mediation strategies” to make it easier for the Chinese public to understand some of reggaeton’s more niche or idiomatic Spanish cultural references without Chinese equivalents.
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