Random Research #414: Musicians learn languages better

[Guest realmayo]

And your assessment?

[Orpheus]

I don't know if there is a connection between the two, but the only things that I am good at, better than the other things that is, are music and languages. I have always loved music and languages and found that I could learn them faster and better than other things.

 

The first thing that I try to get right when I first learn a foreign language is the pronunciation, which happens to be one area of language that I am really interested in. I learn Chinese by self-study and have never had any lessons, but according to some native speakers I talked to, I didn't have any serious problems with pronunciation. Actually I posted a sample of my pronunciation here but didn't get any replies so I guess my pronunciation is not that good anyway hahaha... (here's the link if anyone is interested: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/19910-post-a-sample-of-your-pronunciation-here/?p=326481).

 

Again I don't know if there's a connection at all, but I play the piano and some of my friends who are good at playing the piano are not bad at all at foreign languages, and in fact are quite fond of learning languages too. Anyway here's a video of me dabbling on the piano for those who are interested to know

http://youtu.be/lHbYpgf4TxQ

 

Cheers,

O

[Hofmann]

And your assessment?

There is a difference between musicians and non-musicians. I didn't read Habib and Besson's (2008) full text, so I don't know what recent work they were referring to. I'm interested in what Besson, Chobert, and Marie (2011) find in their ongoing project.