Can any one answer the above question? I was watching a clip on ted by Pamela Kunhl about babies and language aquisiton and she said that after a certain time our ability to learn a new language drops. I was reading some of the comments and two men who had learnt a musical instrument from a young age both said that they have never lost the ability to take on a language because they were able to here the subtle differences because their ears were trained?
Here is something I have noticed. Singers/musicians have an easier time learning new language then their counterparts who are not musically inclined. I noted that time and again, when I was working doing coordination of the educational charitable projects. Small groups of young people from different countries of the world would come for a short time ( about 2 months), some were musicians ( since they were coming to perform for educational programs) and some were not musically inclined ( they were coming to volunteer with other aspects of the programs), I was able to see a huge difference in language learning capabilities between musical and non-musical ones…
I don’t know much about it, but on the flip side someone told me that more chinese-speaking people have perfect pitch than any other language group in the world because pitch is such an important part of the language and to say a word correctly one must employ the right pitch.
A little off subject, I know, but I thought it was interesting.
Also I have read some articles in our kindermusik books that support the idea of musical training increasing language acquisition of all kinds(native and foreign).
Does teaching perfect pitch help in foreign language aquisition?
I believe that perfect pitch (or absolute pitch) is not so essential in foreign language acquisition, because being able to name and differentiate a particular pitch does not help.
If anything, what is more important is relative pitch, because what’s useful in being able to learn a language (and its accent) is being able to hear the difference in pitch from one syllable to another. This ability helps the most when you are learning to SPEAK a foreign language, and I suppose helpful somewhat in UNDERSTANDING too, especially if it’s a language like Chinese where the relative tones are crucial. (that’s why I always tell foreigners learning Chinese to try to ‘sing’ the words.)
I think it won’t make much difference in learning to write or expanding your foreign language vocabulary.
Basically, being musically-inclined and having a ‘good ear’ will be a great help in being able to speak a language well.
And I definitely agree with this :“Basically, being musically-inclined and having a ‘good ear’ will be a great help in being able to speak a language well.” And while it can be a great help it is still not a guarantee that one will have no problems learning new language, there are other factors in play, but I think being musically inclined helps in general.
