(Entertainment-NewsWire.com, April 13, 2013 ) Hertfordshire, UK -- While learning Cantonese cannot teach one to play a piano or proficiently strum a guitar, a new study suggests that speaking the language and other so-called “tonal” languages assist in a distinct advantage when it comes to learning an instrument.
The key is in the general structures governing music and language, several of which tend to overlap in them mind.
In the study that was published in early April on the online journal PLOS One, researchers honed in on how language influences musical processing within one's brain. They noted that those who speak Cantonese who possess no prior music training processed the pitch and tone much akin to how a musician might.
"When we looked at tasks that involved the perception of music, tone language speakers performed very much like musicians," study author Dr. Gavin M. Bidelman, assistant professor at the University of Memphis, told The Huffington Post.
Bidelman is also the director of the University's Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, and has conducted numerous studies with researchers, including this research at the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto, Canada, as part of his post-doctoral effort. When evaluating both Cantonese speakers and English speakers with a lack of musical training against professional musicians, the team found that those who spoke the former language generally outperformed the speakers of English. Despite their lack of training, the Cantonese speakers kept pace with the musicians as well.
"For those who speak tonal languages, we believe their brain's auditory system is already enhanced to allow them to hear musical notes better and detect minute changes in pitch," Bidelman said in a statement released by the institute. "If you pick up an instrument, you may be able to acquire the skills faster to play that instrument because your brain has already built up these auditory perceptual advantages through speaking your native tonal language."
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