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Quote: <BR> <BR>"Listening to the radio improves both learning and memory, finds a new study that investigates how the brain distinguishes and processes sound. <BR>“People who play instruments or listen to a lot of radio programmes are slightly more sensitive to picking up nuances in speech,” says Mikko Sams, professor at the Helsinki University of Technology. <BR>Musicians are for example more sensitive to detecting emotional undertones in speech, and they have an easier time learning foreign languages, explains Sams. <BR>Radio more demanding than television <BR>Sams says radio demands more from the listener than television does. <BR>“Listening to radio demands a heightened form of concentration. And the more you have to concentrate the more you end up learning,” says Sams. <BR>People hear the world differently <BR>Sams has also studied how Finnish brains are honed to detect sounds in Finnish speech that foreigners may not be able to discern. Listening and hearing are closely tied to environment. That said, foreigners hear the Finnish language in a different way than native Finns do. <BR>People learning Finnish may find it impossible to hear or detect certain sounds or sound combinations. Only Finns can hear or properly repeat the word "hääyöaie", a compound of hääyö (“wedding night”) + aie (“intention”). This word is chock full of Finnish phonetic sounds, says Sams. <BR>“These findings are of course baffling to an extent because we are under the illusion that we all hear our surroundings in the same way," adds Sams. <BR>__________________________________________ <BR>Source: <BR> <BR><a href="http://yle.fi/uutiset/news/2009/01/listening_to_radio_is_good_mental_exercise_512134.html" target=_top>http://yle.fi/uutiset/news/2009/01/listening_to_ra dio_is_good_mental_exercise_512134.html</a> <BR> <BR> <BR> <BR>BTW, <BR> <BR>IMO Sams is exaggerating. <BR> <BR>There have been several foreigners speaking perfect Finnish that even the famous professor Higgins (in My Fair Lady) could not tell from the language spoken by native Finns. <BR> <BR>But Sams is right on vowels. They are more difficult than consonants. <BR>For example in Estonian there is one vowel I cannot pronounce, namely is is a mixture of three (sic!) Finnish vowels. <BR> <BR>But in Estonia there is a big island, where natives pronounce just that vowel is such a way that is easy for a Finn to pronounce.
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Many studies have shown that learning to play an instrument while a child, greatly improves the ability to learn foreign language (after all, reading music is similar to that) and also aids in learning math and all scholastic studies.
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