Many times I’ve heard people give the excuse that they are not “good” in foreign languages because they don’t have an “ear” for languages.
Excuses, excuses, excuses.
Let me give you some examples of two half-deaf people and one legally deaf woman who prove this false notion about foreign language learning to be WRONG.
Legally Deaf Since Birth
Katrin, a deaf German friend of mine, learned to speak English because she listened to music. (She can speak and read lips but has very limited hearing.) Even those students who had better hearing than she did in her deaf school in Germany did not learn to speak and pronounce English as well as she did because they did not have any musical training or exposure to music.
Despite her hearing impairment, she played the flute as a child and listened to music. Feeling the sound vibrations impacted Katrin’s ability to sense the rhythm of music and language. The combination of the little that she could hear combined with the vibrations that she could feel from music enabled her to develop good speaking patterns in both German and English.
Watch the video below to see how a deaf German lady learned English via music and how you don’t have to have musical talent to learn a foreign language.
Note: In order to see this video with English or German subtitles, you have to press the CC button in the lower right side of the You Tube box and select English or German subtitles.
Deaf In One Ear
Another friend who is deaf in one ear is in China improving his Chinese. Now Chinese is tough for someone who is partially deaf because it’s a tonal language and you have to pay extra attention to the sound of the language. But he’s doing it.
Partially Deaf
My own mother is partially deaf and speaks English as her second language with an accent that’s not any stronger than that of a typical Russian. As a matter of fact, I know Russians who can hear with both ears, who have a stronger accent in English than she does.
It’s Not About Your Ears
Don’t let your hearing issues keep you away from appreciating and listening to music. You don’t need to have perfect pitch to follow these instructions. I am not a gifted musician and I tend to sing out of key more often than I like.
Humans Are Musical Beings
When we are born, we don’t start speaking automatically. We listen before we speak. When learning languages, we should follow this same pattern and listen to the music of the language before opening our mouths to pronounce words.
Start Listening Today
One ear, two ear or barely functioning ears, it’s not about your ears. Foreign language learning is
about your brain and your intention!
Photo by: Martha
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Susanna Zaraysky
Susanna speaks seven languages with native to near-native accents and is the author of Language Is Music (El Idioma Es Música, in Spanish), a short and easy-to-read book on how to learn foreign languages using music and the media. She knows that language learning can be fun if you know how to use radio, music, TV and other media. Find Susanna on her website or follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Picasa, and on YouTube.
Read more articles Susanna has written.
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Susanna, I’m more than impressed by your friends and your mom who’ve learned difficult languages in face of the challenges that you name. And, I fully agree with you that some of the excuses people use for not learning another language are a little lame. Language learning takes patience and a powerful dose of motivation. I still haven’t figured out what makes people decide to do something that they find difficult, it may have to do with their understanding what the personal rewards are. Still, helping people enjoy what may be a hard task is a good thing, with music and emphasis on listening, as you do, or with games and emphasis on speaking, as I do. Good luck!
Hello Ulrike,
If you figure out what motivates people to take on challenges, you’ll have the key to getting other people of their couches and being active! At some level, it does depend on one’s personal drive to do anything. There are people who are too lazy to do even small and easy tasks. Susanna
An interesting and insightful post. One thing I would say in addition is that not only as you say we should listen before we speak but we need to learn to listen better to what we utter. By paying more attention to that we can become more sensitive to what it takes to change what we say. By doing this we open ourselves more to fine tune what we say.
This seems to be assumed but in fact I have seen that many language learners believing that focussing on what others say, they will improve. Of course that is important, but so too is the inner focus we need to cultivate and then we can start playing with our vocal apparatus so that the two come closer and closer.
Andrew,
You are right, language learners need to pay attention to what they are saying and how they are saying it. Many people don’t even have that awareness in their own language and are not cognizant of their slurring, mumbling, or other speech patterns which render them difficult to understand in their native tongue.