Time and again we have heard of or read about the many advantages of learning foreign languages and with that information we base our decisions on whether we should make a move on learning languages or not. Studies and interesting information have motivated people to try learning other languages and many have succeeded in meeting their purposes.

A new discovery was made when researchers found out that learning Chinese languages can make a language learner more musical, and perhaps achieve perfect pitch. The scientists made the discovery after testing two hundred three music students for perfect pitch by asking them to identify all the thirty-six notes from three octaves played in random order.

Among those tested were twenty-seven ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese students who had various levels of fluency in the tonal languages they learned from their parents. The Asian students who were not fluent in their parents’ language scored no better than the Caucasian students, yet those who were very fluent with their parents’ language had an average of ninety percent of the notes correct.

Professor Diana Deutsch, the psychologist who led the research said that those students who speak fluent tonal languages did incredibly well with the test and the results were overwhelming. She has also stated that based on her experience, the musicians in China don’t regard perfect pitch as anything remarkable because it is very common. However, in Europe and the United States, musicians who have perfect pitch is quite rare with only one in every ten thousand possess this gift.

Perfect pitch, which is also known as absolute pitch, is the ability to name or reproduce a tone without reference to an external standard. Perfect pitch can be demonstrated not only verbally but also by other codes such as sensor motor responses or auditory imagery. Perfect pitch is said to be more common among speakers of tonal languages such as most dialects of Chinese or Vietnamese which depend heavily on the pitch variations across single words for lexical meaning.

Tonal languages use tone to distinguish or emphasize words. Mandarin has four possible pitch variations, Cantonese has six, while Minnan has seven depending on dialect, and Vietnamese has six. The brains of tonal language speakers do not naturally process musical sound as language but there is a possibility that such individuals may be more likely to acquire perfect pitch for musical tones when they later receive musical training.

The study conducted by Professor Deutsch suggests that learning a tonal language plays a far greater role in perfect pitch than genes. She has said that it looks like infants should acquire perfect pitch if they are given the opportunity to attach verbal labels to musical notes at the age when they learn speech.
Learning Chinese or other tonal languages may not be the exact solution to achieve perfect pitch however, you will be gaining something if you opt to learn a new language-you will have the opportunity to communicate with more people, have doors opened to several options due to knowledge in another language, and perhaps become better with your musical skills!

This entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under Language and Science, Learning Methods. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.