The Perfect Pitch

Spanish may surpass English as the predominant language in a few years in the United States, but recent studies say learning to speak Mandarin and Vietnamese as a child helps make you more musical.

The study, first reported by The Telegraph on April 30, suggests being fluent in either of these Eastern languages helps you have perfect pitch, or perfectly balanced frequency in the sounds you make.

After finding perfect pitch among musicians to be very uncommon in the United States and Europe (one in 10,000) but common in certain parts of China, researchers conducted the study. They found that after testing 203 music students, those fluent in Vietnamese or Mandarin identified 90 percent of all 36 notes from three octaves that were played in random order.

Mandarin and Vietnamese are tonal languages in which the pitch of a spoken word is necessary to understanding its meaning. The study suggests that learning a language that uses tones helps exact pitch and make you more musically inclined.

Parents and young children, take heed. If you have dreams of seeing your child become the next Luciano Pavarotti (or even star in the latest installment of High School Musical), invest in a few Mandarin classes. In a few years, Spanish will be good to learn when speaking to friends and neighbors; Mandarin or Vietnamese, however, will make you more musically apt and pleasant to hear speak.