'Music, Language, and the Brain'

What I've found out so far is that everything depends on our mouth position, in English, it's very open mouth position and this is opposite to Polish, where we use very closed mouth position what might make it unclear while speaking in English. It's exactly the same while we're singing, we don't need to open our mouth as much as while singing in English. In solution, there are many Poles singing very unclear in English and easily you could notice very disturbing polish accent, and I'm not talking about accents in general, I mean pronouncing English words as it would be Polish, even if there is a big difference in pronunciation in these both languages, so you cannot read it as they're would the same languages. Every language has its own rhythm, so it's impossible to sing in Polish using English rhythm and otherwise. That's the way how I've learned English so far, singing English songs can help to understand the rhythm of this language. To sing more correctly I have to use that open mouth position and then it affects on my speaking voice as it's going to be more natural and I have to be careful to not sing that in a polish rhythm. In a 'Music, Language and the Brain' book, Aniruddh D. Patel in a chapter 'Nonperiodic Aspects of Rhythm as a Key Link' mentions that, 'Languages have rhythm (systematic temporal, accentual, and grouping patterns), but that this rhythm does not involve the periodic recurrence of stresses, syllables, or any other linguistic unit. Initially, it may seem that "giving up on periodicity in speech" would mean that there is little basis for comparing rhythm in music and language. In fact, the opposite is true. By abandoning a fixation on periodicity one is freed to think more broadly about speech rhythm and its relationship to musical rhythm. As we shall see below, a focus on nonperiodic aspects of linguistic rhythm is proving fruitful in terms of comparing language and music at structural and neural levels' (Patel, 2008, p.159). I think it's very relevant in my project, as Patel agrees that there is a connection between language and music. Does our origin linguistic rhythm affect on our singing? 'There may be a more direct route from language to music. It is known from studies of language acquisition that the perceptual system is sensitive to the rhythmic patterns of language from a very early age (Nazzi et al, 1998; Ramus, 2002b). Composers, like other members of their culture, internalise these patterns as part of learning to speak their native language. We suggest that when composers write music, linguistic rhythms are "in their ears and they can consciously or unconsciously draw on these patterns in weaving the sonic fabric of their music' (Patel, 2008, p.165). It could suggest that we unconsciously sing in our origin linguistic rhythm even if we sing in the second language. If there is such a big connection between linguistic rhythm and music and our origin language affects the way how we sing and pronounce words lets say that singing is the way of natural learning a foreign language. let's use the song written in both languages and sing it through but in both versions try to sing in proper rhythm responding to the right language. It's challenging but there is a huge difference, if I will compare Polish and English it's easy to notice totally different mouth position, stresses on different notes and pronunciation. But if I would just sing the English version in the same way as Polish one I wouldn't pronounce words correctly, because those two languages are totally different. In the solution, I've done English part as much clearly and correctly as I could but I had to imitate English accents and rhythm. By imitating native speakers of the foreign language that we want to learn we're reducing accent and rhythm typical for our origin language so we're going to sound more native in that foreign language and it's easier to get through singing in a foreign language with the awareness for its specific rhythm. Does it mean that singing is a good way to learn a new language in a natural way, it's not only about pronunciation, it's about the rhythm?

#speaking #pronunciation #english #polish #project #music #language #MusicLanguageandtheBrain