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Does Music/Singing help with languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5864 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 1 of 12 15 March 2009 at 5:44am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello once again, forumers! I've got a question that has long been on my mind, and that question is "Does a knowledge of music and/or singing help one learn a language in any way?" Keep in mind, I am referring strictly to knowledge of music and singing; I am not talking about listening to CDs or recording oneself singing a foreign song.
For example, let's take someone who studies music classically. This person can read sheet music, do some basic transposition, and tell the relations between notes (the augmented fifth of Eb is yadda yadda yadda). There are various other things as well (play eir instrument well, improvise without much difficulty, predict chord progressions, etc.). Can any of these skills help in language learning, whether in an obvious way or a more discreet way (for example, the exercise in being able to tell relations between notes help in learning conjugations or something like that)? Are there any noted correlations between experience language learners have had with music and how easy it is for them to learn a language, or which parts of a language they learn quickest? The second part centers on singing. Now, I know that singing is a part of music, but I've singled it out because it requires use of the voice. I suppose that someone who has experience singing will be able to, for example, get the hang of tonal languages much better than someone who can't sing well. There are also other techniques to singing so that the vocal chords don't become damaged, even when singing high-intensity songs, such as opening the space in the back of the throat, keeping a level head, knowing about how far one should take the voice, etc. There's some technique to getting a good, clean sound as well, such as keeping the lips round and not having a flat tongue. Could any of these things (and others, as well) facilitate in learning a language's pronunciation? I've heard many things about the 'terrible tones' in different types of Chinese and other languages, too. I listened to some samples of different tones in Mandarin Chinese and they sounded clear as day to me (except for the warbling fourth one). It's just like finding out how to play a song by ear, and I can't really relate to people who can't hear much of a difference. The Cantonese tones, on the other hand, seem to be a bit more of a challenge, but I think I could still wrap my head around them with more practice and exposure. I've seen a few comments on how studying music can help one better understand the tones as well. That would be an interesting (if a bit long winded) study tactic - study music and listen for the relation between pitches to better understand tones. I can't see that as being feasible, though. I understand that perhaps there isn't a strong correlation, or that the correlation should be taken another way - perhaps people who understand the tones of tonal languages already have a good ear for pitch, and singers usually already have a good ear for pitch and therefore the understanding has less to do with experience singing and more with a 'talent'. However, I am still interested in any links between music, singing, and languages and learning. I'd appreciate any input on the subject. Thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Relative Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5685 days ago 21 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean | Message 2 of 12 17 March 2009 at 8:22am | IP Logged | ||
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Good question.
I'm a pianist of 14 years, but not a singer. I listen to songs in Korean daily and have noticed patterns in the music that link up to certain phrases and vocabulary. For instance, when moving into the relative minor, popular songs often (almost always in Korean pop) use phrases like "tears are flowing," "I miss you," "Don't leave me," etc. At the climax and moving up a third, more hopeful phrases are utilized, such as, "I'll love you forever," "we'll always be together," etc. It's more useful than I first imagined. I can predict when such a chord progression will take place and be ready to hear familiar words associated with the emotion. I'm afraid I don't know anything about the use in tonal languages. Hopefully someone who know's will comment as I'm interested to hear myself. Michael 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6381 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 3 of 12 17 March 2009 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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A background in singing does help with pronunciation, slightly. For instance, I can aspirate/unaspirate (and to a lesser degree, change the amount of aspiration) consonants, since it was something I was taught to do as a young child singing in choirs. On the other hand, while I was taught to modify vowels in various ways, etc, I don't appear to have any sort of natural knack for that (or increased ability to do so), to put it mildly. Experience with tongue positioning, lip rounding, etc do help, but I don't think singers are at a large advantage over other people who have access to decent phonetic descriptions and who are willing to put in some hours of experimentation.
Having sung doesn't seem to help much with pronunciation in general. I'd frankly rate my pronunciation of most languages I can speak a bit of as 'atrocious' (probably due to learning most of what I know through reading, years before listening to audio in any of them, so this may not really be evidence either way). I also don't find Mandarin's tones all that clear, although the clarity varies a bit with the speaker. I don't think reading sheet music helps at all; I've been able to sight-read piano music since I was perhaps 7, and I can't think of any way it influences my language learning. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lapislazuli Tetraglot Senior Member Austria Joined 6978 days ago 146 posts - 170 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, ItalianB1 Studies: French, Hungarian, Esperanto, Czech | Message 4 of 12 19 March 2009 at 10:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think the main-thing that helps someone who is trained in music, is that he would also traind/ used to listen very carefully. Someone who is into music might find it easier to hear the finer nuances in pronounciation. Probably it might also help in remembering words or phrases faster once you have heard them.
And I believe that having had some voice-training, so one knows what is actually happening when we produce a certain sound will also help to a certain degree in reproducing those sounds. As knowing what something should sound like and making it sound like that are two different things. Singers might have an advantage in understanding better how their voice- and speech-production works. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TheBiscuit Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 5865 days ago 532 posts - 619 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Italian Studies: German, Croatian | Message 5 of 12 21 March 2009 at 7:20pm | IP Logged | ||
I also believe this to be true. I was working with a singer a while back (I am also a musician) and she wanted to sing the 'Autumn Leaves' in French (her native language being English). She asked me to write it out for her phonetically as she didn't speak a word of French. She sang it almost perfectly, reproducing every sound with relative ease. I can memorize large chunks of audio, not necessarily songs but dialogues or audio courses/books. This means I can analyse them later in my head. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5654 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 6 of 12 12 April 2009 at 10:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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I heard an interesting segment on public radio once about a study done in China with Mandarin speakers. They were trying to see how much pitch fluctuated with native speakers. They recorded several words with various speakers then about a year later recorded the same words and speakers. If I remember correctly, a large percentage of them had "perfect pitch" because their tones hadn't changed any from the previous recordings. The length of the words hadn't changed either. Just like a singer can recall an A440 so could the Mandarin speakers recall different words in the language.
Now this was a long time ago so the details are fuzzy. If anyone knows the article please post it. I also believe that, while some people are tone deaf, some people are accent deaf as well. I personally can hear anything foreign in a person's American English accent and seem to have a pretty good accent ability in the foreign languages I speak too. I have relative pitch but I never developed my perfect pitch. So, while that's far from evidence, I personally think a natural musical ear can just as well be a natural language ear but probably only good for accents. I guess it has to be stated that a tone deaf person can play piano just as easy as an 'accent deaf' person can speak a foreign language. Thanks, Rout 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mcchristianmcl Newbie Australia Joined 5640 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, Swedish | Message 7 of 12 22 April 2009 at 2:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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From my experience of studying Swedish, I listened to a lot of Swedish songs and it helped me get used to and
immersed in the language. Although this is very effective, you have to make sure that you enjoy the music that you listen to. e.g. Listening to operas in Italian is only effective in your Italian study if you enjoy operas. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5708 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 8 of 12 22 April 2009 at 9:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Rout, I also read a bit about that topic, like in this:
http://www.acoustics.org/press/138th/deutsch.htm (I think it's not the one you mean, but it's the only one I bookmarked) What's also interesting is this abstract: http://web.telia.com/~u57011259/Schlaug.htm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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