 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: claclaws
Date: 2006-04-14 04:55
As a learner of languages ever since my post-teen age, and also a serious, though rather belatedly-beginning, student of the clarinet playing, I'm wondering whether there are some similarities/ relationship between learning a foreign language and learning a musical instrument.
Similar curiosity led Carrie Chang of Indiana University to write a paper titled “Relationship between music learning and language reading? Review of literature” published in 2000. The entire article was in the ERIC database, and the ‘Publication Type’ is “Information Analyses” (I don’t think it’s a journal name).
In summary she found out from a large body of literature that there are three positions: 1) beneficial relations between music learning and language reading; 2) not beneficial, nor harmful; 3) other factors, such as socioeconomic ones, play a bigger role.
Her recommendations for researchers included subjects that interest me.
My questions are as follows: Do music loving, therefore, instrument playing adults tend to speak a foreign language better? Is playing a wind instrument (eg. Flute, clarinet, etc.) beneficial to learning English as foreign language? Does learning a western music contribute to the learning of English (or other western language)?
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Hello,
The above is my recent journal entry in my Second Language Acquisition class. (BTW, I'm back to school this spring, after 15 years ^^)
I checked our bboard, and found 'music and language' thread posted some time ago, and think some interesting ideas have already been mentioned. I haven't read the entire thread yet, so in the mean time, I'd like our bboarders to put in their more recent ideas about my inquiry. Thank you in advance.
Lucy Lee Jang
Post Edited (2006-04-14 04:59)
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2006-04-14 05:48
"I'm wondering whether there are some similarities/relationship between learning a foreign language and learning a musical instrument."
I haven't done any serious research but I'd have to say, statistically in my area, no.
I think my location is a very good example to look into this because in the last 30 years or so a lot of people from the former USSR came here, and there are a lot of musicians among them. Also, I study in a music university and there are a lot of former USSR people studying here (we even have a joke about Hebrew being the second language here).
I notice some very talented musicians, including some of the best musicians I've known or heard, have a very hard time learning the language (and they have to teach here in Hebrew). Even after almost 30 years they still speak pretty bad Hebrew, while some much less talented musicians, have amazingly good Hebrew in no time!
There are of course cases like a German musician in my university that just arrived here less than a year ago and only studied a little Hebrew in Germany - She speaks Hebrew better than almost any foreign I know, and she is also an excellent contrabass player and musician.
I also many none-musicians that have a very easy/hard time learning the language, like a German lady who is here for about six months and never studied Hebrew before arriving here and speaks better than most Israelis.
These are of course just examples out of many other cases.
What I notice statistically here, but it is probably known already, is that age has a lot to do with it. People that arrived here older have a much harder time than young people. Also, I think women has an easier time learning a new language than men, but maybe just because they want it more, I'm not sure.
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Author: Hiroshi
Date: 2006-04-14 08:37
People can learn a foreign language if its grammatical structure is very much same with that of his/her mother tongue.
For example, to learn French is very easy for English speaking people to learn because since Great Britain experienced Norman conquest in 1066 many French words were introduced into Britain.
However, Japanese has a very different structure from that of English and we Japanese have very much difficulty in learning English,German, and French.
BTW. Brain researchers do not seem to show any authoritative info about how our brain works for language and music as shown in this article.
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/biology/b103/f01/web1/wang.html
One thing is certain. We use our brain actively when we do music or speak/read/listen to foreign languages. In Japan, researchers study the effects of Karaoke singing and doing easy calculation(+-x÷) to avoid Alzheimer desease or its worsening. In some hospitals doctors use finger exercises for percussionists for the same purpose.
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2006-04-14 08:53
AFAIK the mathematical/musical and linguistical centres in the brain are in different spots, so I do not see a "natural" synergy effect. In my school I observed no correlation between mathematical talent and linguistical talent.
--
Ben
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Author: Markael
Date: 2006-04-14 13:12
I have thought a lot about this topic lately because I am learning a foreign language and also trying to improve my clarinet playing. (It is quite interesting to be both giving and receiving lessons.)
It would seem that there must be some sort of correlation between the two, if only from the perspective of what scientists have been saying about how keeping one’s mind active helps prevent the onset of dementia.
Both music and language can be approached aurally and in written form. In both cases the aural is primary and writing was later developed as a way to codify the sounds.
When my music students have trouble reading music, I like to make analogies with reading words. We move from smaller to larger units, from the alphabet to words to phrases and sentences. We all remember poor readers in elementary school who – read –one –word –at – a – time.
In the same way, we learn to recognize musical patterns both melodically and harmonically. C – E – G – Bb is a C7 chord. If you know the chord you don’t have to think so hard about each individual note.
I have had students who recognized and played, for instance, an F on the piano, and then went through a mental exercise to try to figure out G. I tell them that that is like counting the steps on a long staircase. You don’t do that; you just keep walking.
All this is simple to most of us, but it take time for the brain to make these connections and to become familiar with different patterns.
Beginning music students have a lot to think about: notes, tempo, dynamics, phrasing. For wind players there is breathing, articulation; the list goes on. There is too much to think about until some of it become second nature. It’s the same phenomenon as when someone learning a foreign language is asked a question and he/she gets that “deer in the headlights” look.
Common sense would suggest that there must be some kind of neurological and biochemical scrambling going on in the brain to make all this happen.
As for the aural component of learning, mastering commonly used phrases is much like learning melodies. I personally feel that this is one of my strengths. People who have a good ear for music usually have a good ear for language as well.
It takes a long time to develop an “ear” for a foreign language in terms of being able to recognize which melodies “work” and which do not. You know that you have become fluent when you stop sounding like Master Yoda.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2006-04-14 16:03
I think there's a definite but small overlap between learning music and learning a foreign language.
Both involve learning a broad and complex body of knowledge, and both involve learning to do complex physical actions such as playing an instrument or making unfamiliar vowels and consonants and combinations of them.
I suppose a trained musical ear can help a language learner hear and repeat unfamiliar sounds and speak with a good accent and cadence.
But that's about it. It's taken me a long time to become what I consider a good musician, "speaking" musical phrases fluently and in a pleasing way. As far as I can tell, that hasn't helped me learn another language. I had the "deer in the headlights" look through three years of college French, particularly when I tried to converse and had to make it up as I went along. Similarly, I don't think knowing a little French has helped my music making, aside from knowing how to make the French vowels that don't exist in English, to use in voicing my clarinet tone.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Markael
Date: 2006-04-14 17:28
Ken, I did not mean to suggest that the study of music would create some secret passageway to learning a language, or vice versa.
There really aren’t very many shortcuts.
The road ahead always presents new challenges.
I have been a musician for decades, but a recent challenge I have faced is playing 32nd notes in an adagio piece.
One might say that everything is relative, or that everything needs to be put into some kind of context. For example, Hiroshi said, “…to learn French is very easy for English speaking people…” Compared to the challenge of learning Japanese, yes, it is easy.
But the fundamental thing is that none of this is easy if you do it right.
...unless you are a Mozart. Most of us aren't prodigies.
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Author: Cuisleannach
Date: 2006-04-14 20:34
I'll have to talk to my friend, a brilliant neurologist and extremely competent violinist, about this.
The big question to me is from the neurology standpoint. Language mainly resides in and around the temporal lobe of the left side of the brain, . For this reason, you can't undergo a procedure meant to ablate a lesion that seems to be causing seizures if it' in the left temporal lobe, because it would likely cause profound effects on speech and language processing, but you can if it's on the right side. By some accounts it seems that music is a higly integrative activity, since damage on the tight side tends to affect melody perception but leaves rythmic senses intact, while left-sided damage tends to cause problems with recognizing played or written music.
I'm not sure about much else of the musical brain (save for the increase in the size of the corpus callosum, the superhighway of nerves that pass info between the two halves of the brain in children who start music, particularly piano, young), but I know that I'm far better at reading and translating spoken languages than I am at writing and speaking them. I'm also a good sightreader in music, and am a very fast reader of English, too.
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Author: Synonymous Botch
Date: 2006-04-14 21:29
One important distinction;
Learning a musical instrument and flubbing a phrase will not get you thrown out of a taxi, nor presented with something inedible at the table...
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Author: Cuisleannach
Date: 2006-04-14 21:30
News from the neurologist.....he's experienced in epilepsy surgery where they remove part of the brain to control intractable seizures. He said these surgeries are often conduted on either side of the temproal lobe. Surgery on the dominant side will often cause speech disturbances. He said that in a small study they examined the effect of this surgery on three professional musicians (it is hard to play when you have several seizures a day). There was huge cpncern as to whether their musical ability would be affected, but it was not. They were able to continue their careers. No word as to whether their speech was affected, though.
-Randy
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2006-04-14 21:40
Markael -
Isaac Stern said he played duets with Einstein once (and only once). He said Einstein was a dreadful player, with no sense of pitch or rhythm.
When you see 32nd notes in an adagio, they're almost always played much slower than they look.
If you want to see some crazy notation, get Telemann's Gulliver Suite.
The Chaconne of the Lilliputians is in 3/128 time, with 128th notes (5 bars) being the longest, and with plenty of 256ths and 512ths and even a few 1028ths. Despite that, the chaconne tempo is rather slow.
The Gigue of the Brobdingngians is in 6/breve time. The fastest note is a breve (double whole note), with lots of longas (2 breves) and maximas (2 longas. They whiz by in gigue tempo.
The listeners of course can't tell. It's a joke just for the performers.
Ken Shaw
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Author: beejay
Date: 2006-04-14 23:05
From Brymer's 'Clarinet', Page 5:
"The few short miles which separate Dover from Calais bring another spoken language; but this is hardly a more dramatic contrast than they also bring to the sound of the clarinet."
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Author: Katrina
Date: 2006-04-15 00:24
Randy said:
but I know that I'm far better at reading and translating spoken languages than I am at writing and speaking them. I'm also a good sightreader in music, and am a very fast reader of English, too.
My comments:
Actually I think I'm one of the most visually-oriented musicians I've ever met. I suppose I also have a very strong kinetic orientation as well, due to my "physical" sensations of what's right/wrong both in speech and in clarinet playing.
I am also a very good sightreader and I speed read (actually skim) with the best of them.
Foreign languages are not too terribly difficult for me either, when I have the time to use them.
One similarity, then: You need to practice both the instrument and the language in order to retain fluency!
Katrina
p.s. The physical/kinetic aspect also contributes to my pronunciation of the languages. I don't necessarily know how they _sound_ when I pronounce them, but I do know how they _feel_!!
Post Edited (2006-04-15 00:26)
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Author: Cuisleannach
Date: 2006-04-15 05:12
I just did the gulliver suite with a recorder group....what a riot! Alas, poor Dr, Shickele, you're a couple hundred years to late!
<<<<<One similarity, then: You need to practice both the instrument and the language in order to retain fluency!>>>>>>>
The internet is great for that as you can read web sites in languages you'd like to stay fluent in......no cheating by peeking at the translated pages!
-Randy
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