The Listening Centre

Home > Listening Therapy > Languages

Mastery of a language becomes much easier by using the electronic ear to sensitize one to the prominent frequencies and latency timings of the language to be learnt. We are all born linguists..…Dr. A Tomatis

Language Interaction

Learning a foreign language is not a question of having a gift for languages but rather a problem of listening. Open the ear and it becomes evident that “we are all born linguists".

In each part of the world and in every country there is a different type of listening.The characteristics of the individual environments have shaped the different languages over thousands of years, giving to each its specific features which the ear has to get accustomed to. Each language has developed its own frequencies. For instance the Spanish ear listens to frequencies ranging between 125 and 500Hz, the French ear between1000 and 2000 Hz. And the British English ear only starts at frequencies of 2000 Hz!

Latency timings are different with each language as well. These are the timings in which the body perceives sound via bone conduction and transmits the information to the ear and the time in which the ear reacts and transmits the message to the larynx. Usually a foreign language is approached by using the frequencies and latency timings of our mother tongue which is quite different from the language to be learnt. Young children experience no difficulties in picking up multiple languages but as we grow older our listening generally settles into a habit and becomes accustomed to those frequencies and rhythms of our mother tongue. It is difficult to break free of the habit. To speak a language we have to adapt our listening to the acoustic frequencies of the new language.

Thanks to the electronic listening device the ear can be trained to listen to the frequencies it no longer hears naturally well. This can only be achieved using sounds and patterns filtered through the listening device to retrain the ear and regain its sleeping potential. The listening device enables the student of languages to transform the way she ordinarily hears so that she hears the language she wants to learn in the same way a native speaker would.