Do you think it helps the ear to have a database of audio phonemes that do not exist in your native language?

[spanglish]

Sometimes I reflect that it would help me to train my ears new sounds that do not exist in my native language, you who think.

[aokoye]

Um? Do you literally mean a phoneme in near isolation? If so that's already a thing.

[Speakeasy]

I recall reading, many years ago, reports of a number studies that had been conducted in the 1980’s which purportedly demonstrated an association between language and music. Two examples come to mind:

• It was advanced that Chinese children learn European classical music more easily than do their European counterparts because, when compared to European languages, the language of the former contains a greater number phonemes than do the latter and these have a greater range (I do not know whether or not this is true).

• It was advanced that Finnish children learn a greater number of foreign languages than do non-Finnish children because their nation’s education system provides them with significantly more exposure to European classical music than do the education systems of many other nations (frankly, I have serious doubts about this one).

I do not know whether or not these studies were supported by subsequent research or if they were ultimately proved to be the over-imaginative musings of linguistic dilettantes. However, I suspect that even if these studies were to point in a direction supporting the OP’s thoughts on the matter, my “gut feeling” would be that it would be vastly more effective and efficient to surround oneself with the sounds of the language which one wishes to learn. That is, if you want to learn German, listen to the sounds of German. Listening to Chinese will not be of much benefit and listening to the random phonemes of all possible languages will be even less so.

EDIT:
Typos, formatting.

[aokoye]

I recall reading, many years ago, reports of a number studies that had been conducted in the 1980’s which purportedly demonstrated an association between language and music. Two examples come to mind:

• It was advanced that Chinese children learn European classical music more easily than do their European counterparts because, when compared to European languages, the language of the former contains a greater number phonemes than do the latter and these have a greater range (I do not know whether or not this is true).

• It was advanced that Finnish children learn a greater number of foreign languages than do non-Finnish children because their nation’s education system provides them with significantly more exposure to European classical music than do the education systems of many other nations (frankly, I have serious doubts about this one).

I do not know whether or not these studies were supported by subsequent research or if they were ultimately proved to be the over-imaginative musings of linguistic dilettantes. However, I suspect that even if these studies were to point in a direction supporting the OP’s thoughts on the matter, my “gut feeling” would be that it would be vastly more effective and efficient to surround oneself with the sounds of the language which one wishes to learn. That is, if you want to learn German, listen to the sounds of German. Listening to Chinese will not be of much benefit and listening to the random phonemes of all possible languages will be even less so.

EDIT:
Typos, formatting.

The first one I don't think is true at all, especially when you consider that there are more phonemes in German and French than there are Mandarin. Are you mistaking the statistics that link knowing a tonal language to having perfect pitch?

In terms of the second, I agree with your doubts in that I can't imagine that's true given the rich classical music traditions of various European countries.

Also for what it's worth, it isn't "linguistic dilettantes" who appear to be writing about the perfect pitch stuff, rather neurologists and musicologists. Which makes a lot of sense because of the advantage perfect pitch can be seen to have in the context of music - though the people I know who have perfect or relative pitch also note the disadvantages.

[Speakeasy]

The articles that I am referring to appeared as "filler pieces" in a major Canadian newspaper about 35 years ago. The OP's question caused me to recall the essential conclusions of the purported studies, which I offered for discussion. I was hoping that you and Caintear might comment. I would not even consider myself a linguistic dilettante -- I just came for the free beer -- and I am in no position to debate the validity of the studys' conclusions.

Nevertheless, my experience in studying languages (the easier Indo-European ones) leads me to believe that, if one's goal is to learn a language, listening to a collection of random phonemes of all possible languages would not be as advantageous as listening to the words, phrases, and sentences of the specific language that one wishes to learn. I can offer no scientific proof for my opinion and an opinion is all that it is.

How could one even "test" the OP's proposition? Select a thousand children from each of several large linguistic groups at birth (as they are exposed to their mothers' languages during development in the womb, one would have to form a sample from several linguistic groups), expose them only to the raw phonems of all possible languages, in random fashion for a period of ten years, then turn them loose amongst different linguistic groups and measure how well they adapt, linguistically, to their new surroundings? Obviously, this is a rather fanciful proposition, as I noted above, I would not even consider myself a linguistic dilettante!

[aokoye]

I didn't come to challenge your ideas in some sort of dogmatic way (heck I agreed with one of them), I was just pointing out that a. you may have remembered one of them wrong (I can link to articles and abstracts about the tonal language in relation to perfect pitch thing if you want - I think Oliver Sacks may have written about it as well), agreeing with you on the Finnish example (because that makes no sense), and noting that while linguists may be interested in those things musicologists are likely more interested in.

For better or worse I'm also a musician, though I'm not nearly as serious as I as when I was younger, which is likely why I remembered the stuff about tonal languages and why I have strong doubts on the Finnish idea.

[aokoye]

How could one even "test" the OP's proposition? Select a thousand children from each of several large linguistic groups at birth (as they are exposed to their mothers' languages during development in the womb, one would have to form a sample from several linguistic groups), expose them only to the raw phonems of all possible languages, in random fashion for a period of ten years, then turn them loose amongst different linguistic groups and measure how well they adapt, linguistically, to their new surroundings? Obviously, this is a rather fanciful proposition, as I noted above, I would not even consider myself a linguistic dilettante!

Oh also all very very young children, regardless of the languages they're parents speak, are capable of producing all of the phonemes of the world's languages. Babies are also capable of recognizing all of these sounds. This is excluding children with physiological issues relating to speech and hearing. The issue is that they need to keep being exposed to and eventually acquire those languages as L1s (or very early as an L2) because that ability goes quickly away as the child gets older. By older I mean before they reach 18 months. This is loosely related to the fact that the major advantage children have over adults in second language acquisition is the ability to speak the language in the accent that they're learning. This isn't something that is one of my main interests but linguistic baby studies are common and there are labs at universities around the world devoted to it. Here are a few examples. This is really relevant for first language acquisition and psycholinguistics. Also probably for speech and hearing science, neurology, and psychology. In reality if I end up doing a MA in linguistics (very likely) I will very potentially be doing research with children and I may or may not end up doing research with infants.

[Speakeasy]

While it is always possible that I have not correctly recalled the essential conclusions of the two studies, given my own interest in languages and my two decades' study of classical guitar, I do remember being quite interested by the articles, most particularly by the one which made the association between the tonal structure of the Chinese language and the advantage that this afforded young speakers of the language in learning European classical music.

Still, even then, I had a "nagging suspicion" that the real secret to their success was their "Tiger Moms" who, desirous of assuring some measure of success for their off-spring, required that the little darlings begin their musical studies earlier in life and and that they practice many more hours than did their European counterparts. Assuring some measure of success for one's child in what-was-then a Third World country having a population that was that was expanding towards one billion would have been sufficient reason to use all possible means of assuring one's child's excellence and hence future prospects. In any event, we have no idea how the author of the study measured the performance of young Chinese musicians to that of young Europeans. Given the very nature of the country, did the author have access to all young Chinese musicians, or only to the best? With whom was he comparing the performance of the young Chinese musians, with those schooled in France, in Austria, in Spain, in Italy, or the United Kingdom, all of which have different national traditions with respect to the training of musians? Was the author sure that he was comparing students of equivalent calibre?

As to the study of Finnish children and the association that was made between their linguistic skills and their exposure to classical music, again, having studied classical guitar myself for about two decades and having never really abandoned playing it, the whole story just didn't make sense to me. If it were true, I would eagerly attend the next conference of polylinguistics and show off my chops; my linguistic chops that is, my guitar chops have declined along with the rest of me.

[Speakeasy]

Oh also all very very young children, regardless of the languages they're parents speak, are capable of producing all of the phonemes of the world's languages...

Perhaps this so. But is it proof that exposure to only the raw phonemes of all possible languages will increase one's ability at a acquiring some new language later in life? Is that not the OP's proposition/question? Or, more importantly, how many angels can dance on the head of pin?

[aokoye]

Oh also all very very young children, regardless of the languages they're parents speak, are capable of producing all of the phonemes of the world's languages...

Perhaps this so. But is it proof that exposure to only the raw phonemes of all possible languages will increase one's ability at a acquiring some new language later in life? Is that not the OP's proposition/question? Or, more importantly, how many angels can dance on the head of pin?

Honestly it wasn't quite clear what exactly the OP was asking. Their post and it's title was

Do you think it helps the ear to have a database of audio phonemes that do not exist in your native language? Sometimes I reflect that it would help me to train my ears new sounds that do not exist in my native language, you who think.

Does that mean learning their current target language, learning a new target language, identifying sounds in general? Also help one's ear in what way? Help you to transcribe (phonologically) languages? Help with pronunciation? Help with language documentation (so transcription - to which the answer is more than likely yes)? That said if you want the experience of forced (or strongly encouraged) exposure to all of the phonemes I'd recommend auditing a few phonetics classes. Studying phonetics is the only reason I can think of why one would find themselves in that situation for an extended period of time.