Some people hear languages better than others
Posted: Mon Sep 09, 2019 7:05 pm
I believe that anyone can learn a new language, there in no question about that in my mind.
I think that if you were able to acquired your native language, you have the inherited ability to learn to understand and speak a second language, regardless of your age. As long as your cognitive capacities allow you to learn new things (old people with dementia will be excluded as well as those with very low IQ or cognitive decline related to traumatic brain injures, stroke, etc). But the average person has the natural ability to learn a new language.
However, I think there are people who have a better predisposition or facility to learn languages. I think those people are naturally gifted, the sad thing is that many don’t even know it.
I think psychologist should develop a standardized test to rate the natural ability of a person for leaning a new language. Who knows, maybe it has already developed and I am not just aware of that.
I can tell you, I am not one of them, for me it requires hard work to learn a languages. But let me write my observations.
Many years ago, when I was a teenager, I met a girl who was hired to babysit and do house chores for a family. Remember, in El Salvador 40 years ago, middle class families had people working for them living in their houses. The point is that this teenage girl was not well educated and had left school to work. One day as the radio was playing and English song, I could not help but noticed that she sang the song from beginning to end in what I thought it was a very good English. She not only had a good memory and had memorized the Lyrics of the song, but her pronunciation was really good. She was parroting the sounds of the words naturally, not even trying.
Years later, I met a young woman from Jordan, who asked me to please translate for her from Spanish to English a few songs that she liked: to my astonishment, she started to sing a few songs of old singer, Julio Iglesias (the old one, not the new pop singer), and her pronunciation was Spanish from Spain. She did not understand a single word she was singing, but again, she was perfectly copying all the sounds of the singer. She spoke Arabic and English, and her English accent was pretty good.
I am sure there are people like that, I don’t know how many, maybe 1 in 100, maybe 1 in 50, maybe 1 in 20 persons. I don’t know, all I can say is that I think these people have a natural inclination to hear sounds of a foreign language, and internalize it and mimic it, much easier than the average person. The problem is that these people are not aware of their talent, and many are not even interested in learning languages.
I am not a musician, but I heard of people gifted with a “perfect pitch” my mother is one of them. In Spanish it is called, “oido absoluto” they hear a note and they can tell which note it is and reproduce it. Maybe, there is an equivalent of the “oido absoluto” for languages.
That’s all folks.
I think that if you were able to acquired your native language, you have the inherited ability to learn to understand and speak a second language, regardless of your age. As long as your cognitive capacities allow you to learn new things (old people with dementia will be excluded as well as those with very low IQ or cognitive decline related to traumatic brain injures, stroke, etc). But the average person has the natural ability to learn a new language.
However, I think there are people who have a better predisposition or facility to learn languages. I think those people are naturally gifted, the sad thing is that many don’t even know it.
I think psychologist should develop a standardized test to rate the natural ability of a person for leaning a new language. Who knows, maybe it has already developed and I am not just aware of that.
I can tell you, I am not one of them, for me it requires hard work to learn a languages. But let me write my observations.
Many years ago, when I was a teenager, I met a girl who was hired to babysit and do house chores for a family. Remember, in El Salvador 40 years ago, middle class families had people working for them living in their houses. The point is that this teenage girl was not well educated and had left school to work. One day as the radio was playing and English song, I could not help but noticed that she sang the song from beginning to end in what I thought it was a very good English. She not only had a good memory and had memorized the Lyrics of the song, but her pronunciation was really good. She was parroting the sounds of the words naturally, not even trying.
Years later, I met a young woman from Jordan, who asked me to please translate for her from Spanish to English a few songs that she liked: to my astonishment, she started to sing a few songs of old singer, Julio Iglesias (the old one, not the new pop singer), and her pronunciation was Spanish from Spain. She did not understand a single word she was singing, but again, she was perfectly copying all the sounds of the singer. She spoke Arabic and English, and her English accent was pretty good.
I am sure there are people like that, I don’t know how many, maybe 1 in 100, maybe 1 in 50, maybe 1 in 20 persons. I don’t know, all I can say is that I think these people have a natural inclination to hear sounds of a foreign language, and internalize it and mimic it, much easier than the average person. The problem is that these people are not aware of their talent, and many are not even interested in learning languages.
I am not a musician, but I heard of people gifted with a “perfect pitch” my mother is one of them. In Spanish it is called, “oido absoluto” they hear a note and they can tell which note it is and reproduce it. Maybe, there is an equivalent of the “oido absoluto” for languages.
That’s all folks.