By Jack Keogh, Managing Director, Keogh & Associates Consulting, LLC
A Mexican company that I consult with is about to send an employee and his family from Mexico City to Beijing in China. They asked me if Solisten could help the family speed up their learning of basic Mandarin before leaving for their new home. I assured them that Solisten can speed up language learning. Let me share with you why Solisten produces such amazing results and why my company has incorporated Solisten into our consultancy.
In the September 09 edition of the Solisten newsletter I mentioned that English uses a lot of high pitch sounds, ranging from 2,000 to 12,000 Hertz. Chinese uses a completely different set of sound frequencies, most of which our Western ears can no longer “hear’. It seems that we lose the ability to hear and reproduce the frequencies which are not native to our “mother tongue” at about age twelve. And, you will remember, that Tomatis showed that we cannot reproduce sounds that we cannot hear.
Musical instruments provide a good analogy to illustrate the differences. The same chord played on a grand piano sounds very different to the exact same chord played on a guitar. This is because of the “overtones” which are generated by each instrument, according to its specific characteristics. These overtones which are not as intense as the basic “tone” distinguish the sound of one instrument from another. That is why a guitar does not sound like a piano which does not sound like a violin. In a sense, it is also why English does not sound like Chinese…
