do musicians have it easier when learning a new language?

[oranthal]

when i means musicians, i am referring to people who play instruments. considering they play instruments, that should mean that they have a good ear for sounds. if that is true, wouldn't it be easier for them to learn a language listening to people talking?

[Danielle]

I'm not sure if that's necessarily true, but my sister is a musician, and she learned Spanish and sign language easily. {of course, if you're talking about about learning new languages by listening, then sign language wouldn't count...} She tries to say the same for me, another forte in which she embarasses me to no end. :rolleyes:

[James]

Not in my experience. I'd have combined those interested in music as a language would display stronger skills in maths and physics rather than languages. Aside from the need of memory, music to play and as a language is mainly mathematics.

If we're speaking about aural ability and being able to listen and take apart music as another language, again, I don't think so in my experience.

I may be wrong, statistically speaking!

[gtracer72]

I don't know. When I was in high school, I took Latin, and I don't think we ever said one word. All we did was read.

[Barb Gordon]

Learning an instrument (s) makes you smarter, so studies say, and could possible make learning a language easier. Didn't help me too much with French, let's see how Japanese goes. I play about four different instruments, and I have two buddies that know almost 10 each....but I don't think playing instruments has helped them. And besides, one's like a child genius, so although he knows Spanish quite well and took the AP test for it, I'm not sure how much knowing musical instruments played apart in proportion to him just being really smart in the first place.

~Barb

[Sandro]

when i means musicians, i am referring to people who play instruments. considering they play instruments, that should mean that they have a good ear for sounds. if that is true, wouldn't it be easier for them to learn a language listening to people talking?

You're saying that just because people who play instruments they can learn a language easier? I wish!!

The only thing your ears sort of develop is good pitch hearing. That's all. At least for me. Now if you want to get into all the writing on the sheet music, that's a different story. When you start reading that, you'll have to know what ad lib, allegro, moderato, cantabile and other terms mean. All that is Italian which in turn is derived from Latin. However, sometimes you would get German music which is obviously different.

[Twilight]

It means they have a good ear for pitches. I don't see how this correlates to languages and meaningful thought though. I've heard about musicians doing better in math and physics as well and that listening to Mozart helps as well. :)