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From: h9290246@hkuxa.hku.hk (Zsoter Andras)
Subject: Re: promoting Esperanto
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Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 08:40:42 GMT
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George Partlow (George_Partlow@gov.state.ak.us) wrote:
>
>..which tends to lend some support to my speculation that 
>"tone-deafness" is not truly an inherited condition... perhaps even 
>"perfect pitch" could be "taught" or "developed" if we "knew how".  Does 
>anyone know of any actual current (or even realtively ancient!) research 
>on this topic?
>

 Well, don't forget that the number of different pitches are not
so numerous in Chinese as in any song.
In Mandarin you have to distingvish about two of them (high and low,
all the other tones are just the combination of these) while in
a more tone-rich dialect like Cantonese you have high middle and low
[and the combinations of the above].
In music (as far as I know, but correct me if I am wrong) you need
several times eight pitches and other properties (like the proportion
of the exact frequencies) also matter.
In other words it is much easier to speak Chinese properly than to
sing in any accepteble level.

Andras

P.S.: Unfortunatelly I am not fluent in any Chinese dialect.
My Cantonese is recognisable for the Hong Kong Chinese but very
limited. So all the above is only IMHO.

