Chinese speakers are better in music

[Ian_Lee]

This is not my hypothesis or personal opinion. I just recall what I read from an article in the current issue of National Geographic (March '05).

The article said that usually only 1 out of 100,000 people can recognize a music note, i.e. D Flat, on its own. And such gifted talent is usually confined to some outstanding musicians, i.e. Mozart, in the western world.

However, the article said that those who speak tonal languages, i.e. Mandarin Chinese or Vietnam, are more endowed with this gift.

In an admission test for the Music Observatory in Beijing, about 63% of the Asian applicants are found to be gifted with such talent while only 7% of non-Asian applicants are.

The only exception is Japan. Since Japanese is not a tonal language but still many Japanese kids are found to be very talented in music. The article attributes this phenomenon to the successful teaching method like Suzuki violin teaching to the kids at a very young age

[skylee]

http://www.chinese-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=3427

[carlo]

I find this reasoning very suspect. Over half of the world's languages are tonal. And tones have nothing to do with absolute pitch at all (for reasons that should be obvious to any speaker of these languages). You can learn to recognize a D flat pretty accurately if you want: it's mostly a matter of training and practice. For example, I know that my speaking voice reaches a comfortable low at around A flat. Up a fourth, and there you are.

Moreover, a non-tonal language is not a language without intonation. English intonation patterns (say) are as complex and subtle as those of Cantonese, it's only their *function* that differs.

[CookieFactory]

http://www.answers.com/topic/absolute-pitch

[CookieFactory]

English intonation patterns (say) are as complex and subtle as those of Cantonese

good one.

[owen]

i could buy that there is a higher likelihood of a chinese speaker having perfect pitch by a very minimal percentage. I would never believe that its 7% versus 63%. As for the test carried out in Beijing.... I would be weary of lending credibility to such a 'study'.

[gato]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,1353606,00.html

Professor Deutsch discovered the connection when she tested first-year students from the prestigious Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, all of whom spoke Mandarin, and the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, who all spoke English.

Each of the students was asked to name 36 notes played at random from a keyboard. The researchers found that of the students who began music lessons between the ages of four and five, 14% of Americans had perfect pitch, compared with 60% of Chinese. When children began music lessons later in life, their chances of having perfect pitch dropped dramatically.

There's an obvious comparability problem here. Beijing's Conservatory of Music is a lot more selective than Eastman is. It's like the difference between the Miami Dolphins and the Miami Hurricanes.

China has 1.3 billion people and only a few music schools. The U.S. has 1/5 the population but many times the number of music schools.

[TSkillet]

have you been to a karaoke parlour in China, Taiwan, Singapore or Hong Kong? Trust me, there's no link between speaking Chinese and musical talent.

[CookieFactory]

anecdotal "evidence" regarding people's singing abilities in karaoke bars is useless, and no scientific conclusions can come from such observations.

[woodcutter]

The article suggests that Chinese speakers are more likely to have "perfect pitch". It does not suggest that that makes them better at music in general.

[carlo]

I've read the link and I did some aural training myself, so I have a vague idea of the issues. If I get it right, the idea is that a speaker of a tonal language will find it easier to 'remember' a given pitch value (frequency) thanks to his own engrained speech habits (say every time he says a first tone in a certain way, he hits an F). There lies an obvious problem. If you look at the actual pitch contours of people speaking a tonal language, sentence intonation is superimposed over the tonal or stress patterns of smaller subunits. The actual perception of tones relies on a number of clues, and shape and position of each contour is more important than pitch. With Mandarin Chinese, even in a sentence of all 1-tones (她今天修收音機）the pitch at each syllable is not exactly the same, but varies according to several factors (like sentence stress or intonation).

The comfortable speaking range varies with each and every speaker, so any association you make between an absolute pitch value and a tone will not be reinforced by listening to others.

The 'well-tempered' tuning system is also very artificial compared to other tunings, so it's most likely a learned thing, i.e. very young children internalize it after being exposed to it. If perfect pitch can cause discomfort when listening to a transposed piece, you might as well argue that it is *harder* for those with perfect pitch to learn a tonal language.

[geek_frappa]

The article suggests that Chinese speakers are more likely to have "perfect pitch". It does not suggest that that makes them better at music in general.

exactly.

but then again, has anybody been to a karaoke bar lately?...

*errr hrrrrmmm*

... ya...

[hparade]

The article suggests that Chinese speakers are more likely to have "perfect pitch". It does not suggest that that makes them better at music in general.

I second that.

[woodcutter]

By the way, Stephen Pinker's book "the language instinct" (the best book you could ever do yourself the favour of reading) says that while we distinguish musical tones with one side of the brain, we make out sentences with the other - Chinese and Thais are no exception.