Your native language could impact your musical ability. A global study that compared the melodic and rhythmic abilities of almost half a million people speaking 54 different languages found that tonal ...

This news release is available in German. The weather impacts not only upon our mood but also our voice. An international research team including scientists from the Max Planck Institutes for ...

More of the brain is busy processing pitch from language and other sounds than previously thought, according to a researcher in neurophonetics at Purdue University. "By studying brain activity at ...

Your mother tongue may modify your musical ability. Speaking a native language that requires tones appears to boost perception of melody, but at the cost of rhythm, researchers report April 26 in ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. – A background in music helps speakers learn a tonal language, such as Mandarin, a new University at Buffalo study suggests. People with musical training — whether instrumental or vocal ...

In some languages, the meaning of each word is not only conveyed by the order of its syllables, but also by the pitch. Tonal languages such as Cantonese, Mandarin or Yoruba are difficult to learn for ...

Listen to Lexicon Valley Episode No. 31: Name That Tone Subscribe in iTunes ∙ RSS feed ∙ Download ∙ Play in another tab If you heard a pair of melodies that differ by just one note, could you tell the ...

Opera singers and dry air don't get along. In fact, the best professional singers require humid settings to help them achieve the right pitch. “When your vocal cords are really dry, they're a little ...

The very first cry of neonates is marked by their maternal language. This seems to be especially apparent in tonal languages, where pitch and pitch fluctuation determine the meaning of words. Chinese ...

All babies can grow up speaking any language, but now researchers have uncovered evidence that genes may in fact play a part in learning so-called “tonal languages”, such as Chinese. Subtle ...