Learning Languages

The Right Ear: The key to learning languages

“Which ear do you use for listening?” You think you would only hear this question when somebody asks which hand (left or right) do you use for writing. However, a study on 3,000 newborns revealed that ears hear differently. It said that our right ear specializes on receiving speech sounds while the left ear immediately focuses on sounds of music and songs.

This would affirm Dr. Alfred Tomatis’, a French ENT,  theory that it is most advantageous to listen predominantly with your Right Ear especially when you want to learn a new language. This is because your right ear is directly connected with your left brain, which is the processing and storage centre of your language.

Moreover, the earlier you learn a language, the greater the chance of learning them fast. In other words, young children can learn languages faster than adults. Why?

From 0-3 years old, the brain grows up to three times its original size. This is the only stage where that happens and whatever takes place at this stage can have a huge impact later on in life.

Now, if the child is exposed to one or two languages at around this age bracket, their totally-available ears and brain will easily accommodate the acoustic characteristics of the language/s compared to those adult ears and brain which are already imprisoned within the linguistic systems of their mother tongue.

In language acquisition, the brain naturally learns to identify phonetic structures (i.e. rhythm, accent, tone, etc.) specific to our mother tongue. Yes, thanks to the voice of the mother, we can already internalize our native language before we are even born. We learn more about our first language at 0-3 years of age where the brain is increasing thrice its original size and volume. This system somehow becomes ‘locked in’ to our language system, impeding to learn a foreign language due to differences in sound patterns from our native language.

Basically, we can assert that all the parameters that make up a language (accent, frequency range, musicality, rhythm…) come from that purely acoustic phenomenon. If the voice contains only what the ear can hear, as stated by A.A. Tomatis, it is logical that from one place to another, where the hindrances of the air are different, hearing will be different and words will not be pronounced in the same manner.