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Adrianna Tan

I heard this in a podcast and wanted to see the study: apparently, speaking a tonal language has a relationship with having an ear for perfect pitch

I grew up speaking several tonal languages alongside English and it was always easy for me to pick up music, and all tonal languages. I can perfectly mimic Vietnamese even if I don’t speak it, to the extent that Vietnamese aunties scold me for being a foreign born Vietnamese person with a poor vocabulary

sciencedaily.com/releases/2004

ScienceDailyTone Language Translates To Perfect Pitch: Mandarin Speakers More Likely To Acquire Rare Musical AbilityCould it be that cellist Yo-Yo Ma owes his perfect musical pitch to his Chinese parents? While we may never know the definitive answer, new research from the University of California, San Diego has found a strong link between speaking a tone language - such as Mandarin - and having perfect pitch, the ability once thought to be the rare province of super-talented musicians.
#Languages
Dec 26, 2024, 07:01 PM·Public·Phanpy
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Adrianna Tan

Thai is very easy for me. Cantonese (which I’m learning) is harder for me re grammar and vocabulary than making the sounds. Every tone and word sounds like a perfectly formed syllable to me, distinct to each other.

On the other hand I have no aptitude (or perhaps interest) in Romance languages. Except perhaps Spanish, and only due to my outsized obsession for tacos.

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Chu 朱

@skinnylatte

This is why I had such a hard time with Mandarin. In Cantonese, our 6 + 3 tones creates many distinctions. Distilled down to 4 tones, I found every other word a homonym in Mando and needed context to tell what was what.

A Cantonese speaking friend of mine has perfect pitch and while I was not as good as her, I can sing out a perfect A 440 every time. I never attributed this to Cantonese, but I will definitely say there's correlation.

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Kee Hinckley

@skinnylatte I really should learn to speak at least one word to tonally in Thai. When I've visited there I've told people to call me Kai, because Kee with the wrong tone gets shocked laughter. It's like in "Pad Kee Mao", which gets translated as "Drunken Noodles" but is probably more accurately "Shit Drunk Noodles".

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Matt Campbell

@skinnylatte . I wonder if it also works the other way. I already have perfect pitch, but have never learned a tonal language. I wonder if it would be easier for me to learn a tonal language than for other adult learners.

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Adrianna Tan

@matt probably! The main difficulty I’ve seen is people who can’t ‘hear’ the difference at all

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Martijn Faassen

@skinnylatte
One wonders whether stress based languages result in better timing, maybe more good drummers

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