Chinese and the Brain

[amego]

Hello people its me again =)

i heard from somewhere that speaking Chinese (including dialects,topolects,whatever lects) makes use of the left and right brain as the word-processing and tone-processing are located at either side of the brain, thus they say the reason native speakers of English (and possibly other no-tonal languages) have a hard time with mandarin is because when they speak they only utilise one side of the brain, so when tones come in, the other side of the brain is not used to it, and thus the 怪腔怪调 (strange accents and tones...no offence )

Is this true? Or what i heard was merely crappy craps?

[adrianlondon]

It's true. At least, I believe it

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3025796.stm

And I'll quote the main bit in csae of firewall issues :

Dr Sophie Scott and colleagues at the Wellcome Trust carried out brain scans on a group of Mandarin and English speakers.

They found that the left temporal lobe, which is located by the left temple, becomes active when English speakers hear English.

People who speak different sorts of languages use their brains to decode speech in different ways

Dr Sophie Scott,

Wellcome Trust

The researchers believe that this area of the brain links speech sounds together to form individual words.

They expected similar findings when they carried out scans on Mandarin speakers.

However, they found that both their left and right temporal lobes become active when they hear Mandarin.

"People who speak different sorts of languages use their brains to decode speech in different ways," said Dr Scott.

"It overturned some long-held theories."

Mandarin is a notoriously difficult language to learn. Unlike English, speakers use intonation to distinguish between completely different meanings of particular words.

For instance, the word "ma" can mean mother, scold, horse or hemp depending on how it is said.

The researchers believe that this need to interpret intonation is why Mandarin speakers need to use both sides of their brain.

The right temporal lobe is normally associated with being able to process music or tones.

"We think that Mandarin speakers interpret intonation and melody in the right temporal lobe to give the correct meaning to the spoken words," said Dr Scott.

"It seems that the structure of the language you learn as a child affects how the structure of your brain develops to decode speech.

"Native English speakers, for example, find it extraordinarily difficult to learn Mandarin."

[Ferno]

damn, so it's too late for non natives?

[deezy]

Interestingly, far more Asians have perfect pitch than other races. And this ability appears to be the result of an interaction between genetic influences and early (by age 4.5) environmental stimuli. There are not generally cases known where it has been successfully developed in adulthood.

So amazingly, 32.1% of Asian university students and in some schools, over half the Asian students reported perfect pitch!

This compared to the general population where only:

.6% of children taking music lessons in elementary schools.

7% of students studying music in U.S. universities.

15% of musicians in major U.S. orchestras.

...have perfect pitch.

And it is sometimes said that, in its highest form, perfect pitch ability occurs in as few as one in 10,000 persons in the general population, almost always among people who have had musical training before the age of six.

So, Chinese tonality may be a cause, correlation and/or effect of more widespread perfect pitch amongst Chinese.

[Ferno]

they said Asians though, not chinese

[rockytriton]

english doesn't use tones, but it does use accents. This is just as important as tones, which you will see if you try to understand a non-native english speaker. For instance, my friend is French Canadian, and I sometimes can't understand him, he says the words correctly but accents the wrong parts. Take a work like realize. We say it like "re-al-IZE" he sometimes says it as "re-AL-ize", while it seems this is a small difference, it makes it hard to understand, espcially when he does this with more than one word in a sentence.

[stephanhodges]

Although I don't remember the source, I do remember reading the same information about the brain scan.

However, the information about using both lobes of the brain only applied to people who were learning chinese as a second language (I don't think it even included people who have become fluent as a second language).

The source I read indicated that brain scans on native speakers of Chinese showed activity in only one lobe.

That's what I recall reading.

[ala]

Chinese tones are relative (different speakers have different pitches, but you decipher relatively), shouldn't really help much in having perfect pitch. I could see how speaking a tonal language will allow people to have better relative pitch.

they said Asians though, not chinese

Japanese is also a tonal language.

[yingguoguy]

Japanese is also a tonal language.

No it isn't.

True some multi-syllable words change between two pitches (high and low), but these vary a lot between Japanese dialects anyway and are rarely a source of confusion. Most (but not all) Japanese language text books ignore this colouring as irrelevant, and I don't think I've ever been misunderstood in Japanese as a result of a dodgy pitch. If only the same were true in Mandarin.

To try and keep this post on topic, I'll add that I've found learning Japanese significantly easier than learning Mandarin, exactly because of the tones.

[rockytriton]

yea, it sure would be embarassing asking someone if you could take their horse out on a date instead of their mother.

[ala]

Japanese is also a tonal language.

No it isn't.

True some multi-syllable words change between two pitches (high and low)' date=' but these vary a lot between Japanese dialects anyway and are rarely a source of confusion. Most (but not all) Japanese language text books ignore this colouring as irrelevant, and I don't think I've ever been misunderstood in Japanese as a result of a dodgy pitch. If only the same were true in Mandarin.

To try and keep this post on topic, I'll add that I've found learning Japanese significantly easier than learning Mandarin, exactly because of the tones.[/quote']

Um no, Japanese is a tonal language. There are many different types of tonal languages, Mandarin's contour tone is but one of them. Japanese is not a contour tonal language, but neither is Shanghainese, a Chinese dialect. Japanese however is still tonal, because its accents are based on pitch, and pitch is a quality of intonation. Different pitch pronunciations of "sake", "ame", "kami", "hashi", etc in Japanese can lead to different meanings if provided without context. Thus this tonal quality of the Japanese language might also help Japanese speakers master relative pitch easier (the point of this thread topic) than native speakers of stress accent languages like English and German. Sub-Saharan African languages are tonal also, but they like Japanese and Shanghainese do not have tones based on set contours. A Chinese professor in Shanghai has recently commented that on the multisyllabic level, Shanghainese is generally identical to the Japanese pitch accent tonal system (source:《上海语言发展史》钱乃荣 著). This is why certain series of syllables in Shanghainese (like 鞋子没坏，鞋带先坏) can sound exactly like a Japanese sentence.

It is possible to speak Shanghainese completely with wrong and even opposite pitches and still be fully understood (young Shanghainese speakers do this all the time and their parents understand them just fine). This has also been cited by Chinese linguists. Additionally, Shanghainese's tones are only limited to the actual city; if you go into suburbs (say Songjiang), what is a high-low "HUOEhi" (欢喜 "to like") in downtown can be pronounced with a low-high "huoeHI" in the suburb, yet there is no significant intelligibility issue between suburban Shanghainese and urban Shanghainese.

Back to the point, my feeling is that native speakers of any language that can distinguish different vocabulary by pitch alone has an advantage in learning musical relative pitch than languages that can't, regardless of whether this is done by contour pitches (Mandarin, Thai, Cantonese) or not (Japanese, African languages, and Shanghainese). I hope more studies are done of the different tonal languages in the future on this.

[yingguoguy]

I didn't know that linguists classified that as being tonal, so I apologise. It's certainly not tonal in the way that Mandarin and Thai are. I don't think there's any dispute that Japanese has some pitch properties. But then so does English. Should the fact that I can distinguish whether something is a question or not by the rise in pitch at the end, mean that I'm more likely to have perfect pitch? It's often complained that Australians end every sentance as if it's a question, so it changes with dialects as well.

Does these pitch variations really help in Japanese learn Chinese for example? I'd always assumed that the Japanese would find learning Chinese as difficult as English speakers.

It is possible to speak Shanghainese completely with wrong and even opposite pitches and still be fully understood

Damn. I've been learning the wrong topolect all this time.

[amego]

Yo everyone thanks for all the replies (keep them coming though), i've learnt ALOT...

damn, so it's too late for non natives?

well Ferno if you put in effort i believe its possible...i've heard many Western people speaking good Chinese too...it really takes sometime to "rewire" the brain, take your time pal =)

COOL to learn that Japanese is actually a tonal language, yet again ala saves the day!

And that Shanghainese "toning" is not what i thought it was...

and thanx deezy for the co-relation between music and tonal languages

Well guys its time for me to share Singlish again...haha as you all know, Singlish is a "rojak"(rojak is an Singaporean dish consisting of many ingredients mixed and stirred together, hence resulting in the meaning of "anyhow mix") language, thus when we speak English, we tend to introduce tones to it like as in Chinese(largely Mandarin), as wiki puts it, Singlish has a "staccato" feel.

Heres the link again, anyway, Singlish is very power one!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singlish

anyway are there any Western languages that are tonal?

Shanghainese (like 鞋子没坏，鞋带先坏) can sound exactly like a Japanese sentence.

anyway ala, can you enlighten me on the pronunciation? Can you display the hiragana for me? thanx

[Ferno]

ala, are Japanese's "tones" formally addressed in offical Japanese language courses?

[carlo]

Back to the point, my feeling is that native speakers of any language that can distinguish different vocabulary by pitch alone has an advantage in learning musical relative pitch than languages that can't

I can't see why. Relative pitch means being able to distinguish melodic intervals, usually with 1/2 tone precision. In Mandarin Chinese the shape of tonal contours is more or less constant, but the variations in (average) pitch between two given tones are not constant. The range between the lowest and highest point of the pitch contour for each syllable varies according to speaker, intonation, emphasis etc (just like it does in English, btw).

So I can't see what the advantage of knowing Chinese would be in ear training: they are two totally different skills. Any English speaking kid can tell if a given statement is a question or an answer, only on the basis of the different intonations being used. How is this different from what Chinese speaking kids do?

I hear Swedish has pitch accents, btw. Don't know for sure though.

[Mugi]

Different pitch pronunciations of "sake", "ame", "kami", "hashi", etc in Japanese can lead to different meanings if provided without context.

In this one sentence you've listed practically every example where pitch accent plays a role in lexical distinction. And as someone above mentioned, this varies widely among dialects...

I didn't know that linguists classified that as being tonal

They don't usually...and laymen certainly don't. I think you're pretty safe in continuing to say that Mandarin is a tonal language and Japanese isn't.

Does these pitch variations really help in Japanese learn Chinese for example?

Not in my experience.

Japanese is not a contour tonal language, but neither is Shanghainese.

It is possible to speak Shanghainese completely with wrong and even opposite pitches and still be fully understood

To what degree is this true of other Wu dialects? Is it correct to assume that Shanghainese was once a (contour) tonal language but that the tonal system has collapsed/developed into employing a pitch accent system?

[amego]

In my layman terms, i should say that Chinese is heavily tonal and Japanese is mildly tonal.

[ala]

ala, are Japanese's "tones" formally addressed in offical Japanese language courses?

yes, it is formally addressed as pitch accent (I took some japanese at uchicago), and that different pronunciations can lead to different meanings. the examples the professor gave was "kami": 紙kaMI = paper, 神KAmi = god; and "kashi": 歌詞KAshi = lyrics, 貸しkaSHI = loan. Capital letters = high accent.

In this one sentence you've listed practically every example where pitch accent plays a role in lexical distinction. And as someone above mentioned, this varies widely among dialects...

I don't think so. I can list hundreds of examples if you want. Here's another 5 off my head just for argument's sake: 桃moMO = peach, 股MOmo = thigh; 買うkaU = to buy, 飼うKAu = to raise; 居間iMA = living room, 今Ima = now/current; 声明seiMEI = statement, 生命SEImei = life; 鳴るnaRU = to ring/call, 成るNAru = to become.

And it doesn't matter if it varies widely among dialects, you think the Mandarin tones don't vary amongst Mandarin dialects? The fact that lexical distinction is made based on the pitch value of syllables makes Japanese automatically a tonal language.

Does these pitch variations really help in Japanese learn Chinese for example?

Not Mandarin, but definitely Shanghainese. For example: 故事couZU = story and 歌词COUzu = lyrics.

It's just as difficult to think of these words in Shanghainese as in Japanese. Only 30% of Shanghainese words have a initial downstep accent (H-L-L-L), less than 5% are L-H-H-H, and remaining 65% are default/accentless (L-H-L-L).

Mandarin tones are very much contour, you sense the tones by the contours they take (up, down, flat etc), so it's a lot more obvious than the Shanghainese and Japanese tones.

To what degree is this true of other Wu dialects? Is it correct to assume that Shanghainese was once a (contour) tonal language but that the tonal system has collapsed/developed into employing a pitch accent system?

All Wu dialects lose their contours in polysyllabic words and instead can be split into H-L or L-H, this is why to a Mandarin speaker, all the Wu dialects sound pretty similar. What makes Shanghainese special is that there is no trace of "original citation tone" in its polysyllabic words. For example 朋友Banjeu is low-high, but 男朋友Noebanjeu is low-high-low; the same 朋"ban" which was low in Banjeu is now high in Noebanjeu; the "ban" in Noebanjeu now has exact same pitch as the "jeu" in Banjeu. Whereas many other Wu dialects still have some remnant of the original 朋 tone. There are rural Wu dialects that exhibit the same characteristic as Shanghainese, so Shanghainese is not unique, it's just the most famous example due to the number of its speakers.

Because of the extensiveness and complexity of Wu tone sandhi (every word is affected by tone sandhi), it has been speculated that the original indigenous language in the Wu-speaking region was non-tonal or very rudimentarily tonal, and the local people there who were later Sinized never fully mastered the Chinese tones into their daily speech. They theoretically knew, but did not actually apply it in real conversation, and developed ways to circumvent the full pronunciation of each tone.

In Mandarin Chinese the shape of tonal contours is more or less constant, but the variations in (average) pitch between two given tones are not constant. The range between the lowest and highest point of the pitch contour for each syllable varies according to speaker, intonation, emphasis etc (just like it does in English, btw).

Mandarin Chinese tones are mainly contour, true, but the pitch range is still fairly stable in normal, calm speech; variance is not that large. A better example though is the contrast of two tones based on pure pitch differences like a comparison of the low-flat and high-flat Cantonese tones.

anyway ala, can you enlighten me on the pronunciation? Can you display the hiragana for me? thanx

Audio of the sentence in Shanghainese 鞋子没坏，鞋带先坏 ---> あつまわ、あたしわ（厚真は、阿多氏は, atsumawa atashiwa）.

That sentence is too concise though, in real colloquial Shanghainese it would be: 鞋子么还呒没坏塌了呢，鞋带先坏塌了 (あつまえまわたらね、あたしわたら atsuma ema watara ne, ata shi watara).

[carlo]

the pitch range is still fairly stable in normal, calm speech; variance is not that large

Pitch range is also fairly stable in non-tonal languages. The citation form of English words, like 'interesting, also shows a gliding pitch contour, and the amount of pitch change along this 'falling contour' is also fairly predictable, as long as the speaker is the same and the word is said in isolation. But in actual speech, pitch range varies continuously according to intonation, emphasis, prosody etc. This happens in all languages I know of, tonal or otherwise.

The problem is that children learn languages by listening to actual speech, not citation forms. So going back to the original question, how could speaking a tonal language help people distinguish intervals? If f you had minimal pairs of words that are distinguished by the amount of pitch change, so that lao3shi1 (perfect fourth) had a different meaning from lao3shi1 (minor third), I would agree with you. But I don't know of any tonal language that does that, certainly not Chinese.

A better example though is the contrast of two tones based on pure pitch differences like a comparison of the low-flat and high-flat Cantonese tones.

Cantonese flat tones are distinguished by relative pitch only in the sense that one is consistently higher than the others, but this does not mean that the intervals between them are constant.

[流]

ala:

All you talked about was stressing of certain syllables. English does this, too!!

If you heard, "KAmi, ichimai agete kudasai," would you understand it? Or would you think they were asking for one flat god? It would be like someone saying engLISH rather than ENGlish. You cann hardly call stressing a syllable a “tone.”

BTW, the kanji for 成る (naru) is almost never used.

--

This is what you mean--and it still does not make Japanese TONAL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent