From: unruh@invalid.ca   
      
   On 2012-05-20, Jim Beard  wrote:   
   > On 05/20/2012 12:50 AM, Adam wrote:   
   >   
   >> My acoustics professor said that after roughly age 18 or so,   
   >> people lose the ability to pronounce new sounds, or to lose a   
   >> local or regional accent.   
   >   
   > I think this is more a function of how the brain works than of   
   > ability to produce new or different sounds.   
   >   
   > The brain "preprocesses" language, parsing out syllables,   
   > morphemes, or whatever you wish to call the "atomic" elements and   
   > recognizing specific characterisics associated with each.  If the   
   > brain does not develop the neural pathways allowing correct   
   > parsing, or not facilitating association with the "correct" form,   
   > one simply "cannot hear or recognize" the distinctions.   
   >   
   > If your brain cannot "hear" the distinction, it should come as no   
   > surprise you will not be able to speak in a manner that correctly   
   > makes the distinction.   
   >   
   > By age 5, most of us have most of our aural-recognition neural   
   > pathways pretty much set.  Some development continues,   
   > particularly if one is bombarded by new sounds and required to   
   > learn to handle them (e.g. music instruction, instrumental or   
   > voice), or if new forms of pattern recognition are encouraged or   
   > required, as that seems to carry over.   
   >   
   > Absent something to keep the brain adding these aural-recognition   
   > and pattern-recognition capabilites, a persons ability to add   
   > them declines dramatically.  My estimate is that the ability can   
   > fade as early as 10 or 12 years of age, and certainly can be gone   
   > by age 18.  A history of proficiency in music or in mathematical   
   > studies seems to strongly correlate with longer-continuing   
   > ability to add new capabilities.   
      
   The problem is the lack of feedback. Because you have trained your mind   
   to hear certain sounds in a certain way ( because there are variations   
   in the way people speak say English, you have to create equivalence   
   classes of sounds to say vowels) you have no basis for feedback to help   
   you adapt your sounds to creating the proper vowels in the new language.   
      
      
      
   >   
   > Cheers!   
   >   
   > jim b.   
   >   
      
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