Does teaching perfect pitch help in foreign language aquisition?

[Kimba15]

Hi Everyone,

Can any one answer the above question? I was watching a clip on ted by Pamela Kunhl about babies and language aquisiton and she said that after a certain time our ability to learn a new language drops. I was reading some of the comments and two men who had learnt a musical instrument from a young age both said that they have never lost the ability to take on a language because they were able to here the subtle differences because their ears were trained?

What are your thoughts?

Kimba

[Skylark]

Here is something I have noticed. Singers/musicians have an easier time learning new language then their counterparts who are not musically inclined.  I noted that time and again, when I was working doing  coordination of the educational charitable projects. Small groups of young people from different countries of the world would come for a short time ( about 2 months), some were musicians ( since they were coming to perform for educational programs) and some were not musically inclined ( they were coming to volunteer with other aspects of the programs), I was able to see a huge difference in language learning capabilities between musical and non-musical ones....

[MonkeynoseMomma]

I don't know much about it, but on the flip side someone told me that more chinese-speaking people have perfect pitch than any other language group in the world because pitch is such an important part of the language and to say a word correctly one must employ the right pitch.
 A little off subject, I know, but I thought it was interesting.  

[MonkeynoseMomma]

Also I have read some articles in our kindermusik books that support the idea of musical training  increasing language acquisition of all kinds(native and foreign).

[KL]

Does teaching perfect pitch help in foreign language aquisition?

I believe that perfect pitch (or absolute pitch) is not so essential in foreign language acquisition, because being able to name and differentiate a particular pitch does not help.

If anything, what is more important is relative pitch, because what's useful in being able to learn a language (and its accent) is being able to hear the difference in pitch from one syllable to another.  This ability helps the most when you are learning to SPEAK a foreign language, and I suppose helpful somewhat in UNDERSTANDING too, especially if it's a language like Chinese where the relative tones are crucial.  (that's why I always tell foreigners learning Chinese to try to 'sing' the words.)

I think it won't make much difference in learning to write or expanding your foreign language vocabulary.

Basically, being musically-inclined and having a 'good ear' will be a great help in being able to speak a language well.

[Skylark]

Great clarification, KL!

And I definitely agree with this :"Basically, being musically-inclined and having a 'good ear' will be a great help in being able to speak a language well." And while it can be a great help it is still not a guarantee that one will have no problems learning new language, there are other factors in play, but I think being musically inclined helps in general.

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