November 28, 2004

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  November 09, 2004
  Speaking Tonal Languages Promotes Perfect Pitch

  
  
  
  
  

  A new study concludes that young musicians who speak Mandarin Chinese can learn to identify isolated musical notes much better than English speakers can. Fewer than one American in 10,000 has absolute pitch, which means they can identify or produce a note without reference to any other note. Also called perfect pitch, this skill requires distinguishing sounds that differ by just 6 percent in frequency. Researchers at the University of California at San Diego found that native speakers of Mandarin Chinese and Vietnamese frequently match this level of precision during ordinary speech. In these so-called tonal languages, changing pitch can completely alter the meaning of words.Until now, it was not known whether this precision in linguistic pitch transferred to musical tones.

  
  

   One limitation of the study was that all of the Mandarin speakers from the Chinese institute were also ethnically Chinese, so genetic differences could explain some of the effect

  
  

   

  • 5:43 pm
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