From: "Mangiat"
> D. Koller wrote:
> > From: "Thomas R. Wier"
> > > Indeed,
> > > analogously, people who speak languages which employ tonal phonemic
> > > contrasts essentially all have perfect pitch.
> > You apparently have not endured an evening in a Chinese karaoke parlor.
:)
> I think I have to agree with you, Kou. You see, one of my many activities
is
> studying piano at my town's Conservatory. There are many foreign students
as
> well, 90% Chinese-japanese-Korean. My teacher says they'll never learn
what
> is Music : )
Jokingly or no, this is certainly *not* what I meant to imply. A bit
culturally imperious for my blood, as is this:
> I heard a similar compliant from a Chinese music scholar about
> the class of eager Americans wanting to learn Chinese 7-string zither
_qin_
> music...
> "They have no sensitivity... no sense of "flowing"..." etc.
I think both the East and the West have enough gifted musicians between them
to make the "teacher's" and the "scholar's" claims ludicrous and
unproductive. What I was kvetching about was the notion that "people who
speak [tonal] languages...[essentially] *all* have perfect pitch", and
despite some interesting arguments about brain hemispheres by someone in a
later post, I'm still quite skeptical. Perhaps I'm working under a different
assumption as to what constitutes "perfect pitch".
Kou