who says chinese cannot speak english fluently? In singapore itself there are so many.
that's because the chinese language is so hard to learn, relies on sheer memory and rote learning, is extremely archaic and unsystematic, is inefficient and irrelevant to modern information technology, and consumes so much brain energy, memory and cranial power that the chinese learner's creative pursuit and inventive mentality are heavily compromised. that wasted energy, power and memory could have been used for more modern and civilized uses instead of instinctive reversion to clearing throats during meals, spitting in the streets, peeing at bus stations, and shitting in plain view at transit facilities.
A 2004 UC San Diego study published in showed that speaking tonal languages, e.g. Chinese, promotes perfect pitch in music.
Speaking Tonal Languages Promotes Perfect Pitch
November 9, 2004 |By Don Monroe
A new study concludes that young musicians who speak Mandarin Chinese can learn to identify isolated musical notes much better than English speakers can. Fewer than one American in 10,000 has absolute pitch, which means they can identify or produce a note without reference to any other note. Also called perfect pitch, this skill requires distinguishing sounds that differ by just 6 percent in frequency.
Five years ago researchers led by Diana Deutsch of the University of California at San Diego found that native speakers of Mandarin Chinese and Vietnamese frequently match this level of precision during ordinary speech. In these so-called tonal languages, changing pitch can completely alter the meaning of words. For example, the Mandarin word "ma" means "mother" when the vowel is a constant high pitch, but means "hemp" when pronounced with a rising pitch. Until now, it was not known whether this precision in linguistic pitch transferred to musical tones.
To address this question, Deutsch and her colleagues compared 115 advanced music students from Rochester, New York, with 88 students from Beijing. In results to be presented at the meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in San Diego on November 17, the scientists found that the Mandarin speakers were much more likely to have absolute pitch than were English speakers who had started musical training at the same age. For example, 60 percent of Beijing students who had begun studying music between the ages of four and five years old passed a test for absolute pitch, whereas only 14 percent of the American students did. In both groups, students who started their musical instruction later were less likely to have absolute pitch, and none of the Rochester students that began training after their eighth birthday had the ability.
Deutsch suggests that for students who speak a tonal language, acquiring absolute pitch is like learning a second language, which becomes much more difficult after a ¿critical period¿ of development. For students who speak a nontonal language such as English, however, absolute pitch is more like a first language, for which the critical period occurs at a much younger age. One limitation of the study was that all of the Mandarin speakers from the Chinese institute were also ethnically Chinese, so genetic differences could explain some of the effect.
that's because the chinese language is so hard to learn, relies on sheer memory and rote learning, is extremely archaic and unsystematic, is inefficient and irrelevant to modern information technology, and consumes so much brain energy, memory and cranial power that the chinese learner's creative pursuit and inventive mentality are heavily compromised. that wasted energy, power and memory could have been used for more modern and civilized uses instead of instinctive reversion to clearing throats during meals, spitting in the streets, peeing at bus stations, and shitting in plain view at transit facilities.
No lah, uncle. You only hear "oredy oredy" due to becoming hard of hearing i.e. deaf. Sinkie mom said that word louder than the rest to emphasise fact that it was not the first time that the child had been careless. Soon, your hearing will deteriorate further and it will sound like "old lady, old lady" before it finally becomes "....................."
can sound musical, and are often difficult to grasp for native English speakers. While most commonly spoken Indo-European languages lack tonal variation, tonal languages like Vietnamese and Cantonese can convey meaning with as many as six different tones.
qualities with pitch variations in music, those similarities are a promising topic for research.
certain learning patterns with trained musicians. Notably, tonal language speakers are far more likely to have perfect pitch- the ability to recognize the pitch of a musical note by ear.
investigator Gavin Bidelman in a statement. "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."
