Timing is everythingYou perceive events in time against a regular pulse, a clock, a consistent equal time division...
..A
mora is a simple sound, recognized as distinctive in spoken language.
A
syllable is a complex unit of speech that might contain as many as 4
moras (or
morae)...
| English | Japanese |
Written as | Tokyo | 東京 (とうきょう) |
Analyzed as | To-kyo or To-ki-yo | To-u-kyo-u
|
Sounds like | Toe-key-oh | Tōkyō |
...And how does that sound in Japanese? The mora versus the syllable in Japanese songs2015 FEB 12 by Natalie Tong for UNRAVEL Magazine No.2
unravellingmag.com/articles/japanese-song-translation/ In this article, I explore how Japanese songs make use of two different text-setting
styles, taking advantage of both the mora and the syllable in music... Ah! Thanks Tan.
I'd not heard of mora, but I have heard and noticed them.
It helps explain a number of things I'd been wondering about over the years and gives me lots to think about. Japanese speakers pronunciation of some English words and why Japanese words are difficult for me to say, Even with Romaji lyrics I struggle with Japanese karaoke and am forever getting frustrated by the rhythm of the words thing.
I'm still unlikely to try singing in Japanese at any gigs in the near future. I'm sure there'll be a few bands who will be very glad not to hear that.
Those bands probably can't hear you anyway,
they just like to see you carrying on.
The cognitive science crowd that study language learning have an
even more discouraging message for second-langage people.
It's popular, still, to believe in a kind of window of programmability,
from early infancy to — who knows? — three years old?
During this phase of your brain's development, you are said to be like
Google's translation AI. That should clue you in to the existence of
fads and fashions in science.
But anyway, during your initial language acquisition phase, your
quivery gray and white hardware is running a massive statistical
sampling project to analyze what the meaningful sounds of your
first language actually are, and what they sound like individually
and in combinations, in all situations.
Speaking, yelling, singing, talking with your mouth full, all of it.
When you've gotten to school age, that's all behind you. Now you
don't have the benefit of this unconscious mental process running.
You have to do things the hard way, by thinking and being alert.
If you're Asian, you'll always be in danger of mixing your Rs and Ls,
even though there's nothing wrong with your ears. The speaking
part of your brain says they're not separate or distinct, one's as good
as another, and that's all there is to that.
If you're a typical Westerner, you're always going to want to bite your
lower lip when you say your fs, and to deliver these long, uncalled-for
vowel sounds that turn a simple u into ooo.
You're always going to be scrambling in the background to process
the sounds of a second language, which would have been pre-processed
for you already had it been your first language.
Your mileage may vary. Probably not a lot.
〜〜〜
This is a tendentious lecture by I Am Not A Scientist Guy on the subject
of so-called perfect pitch. It's relevant because absolute pitch recognition
in music is thought to be a function of your innate language learning ability.
Or maybe it's vice-versa. But functionally related somehow.
Why Adults Can't Develop Perfect Pitch
2017 MAY 25 by Rick Beato (14:12 of 16:25)
I am responding to the hundreds of adult musicians that are mad
at me for telling them the truth about Perfect Pitch. Unless you are
a baby reading this, forget about it! Sorry, but it's not my fault.
It's biology.At 14:12, you get a citation to a research paper claiming that the anti-seizure
medication
VPA or valproic acid re-opens a window of brain plasticity. But I
don't see where anybody taking VPA to control seizures has improved their
pitch recognition or their ability to understand Rina from BRINKY.