On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 08:25:36 -0500, Ken Koester <kkoester at email.ers.usda.gov> wrote: > Made even worse by the fact that most people lose the ability to hear > differences between vowel tones they are accustomed to & foreign ones by > the time they are 12. That's why few adults learn to speak another > language with the correct accent or at least, accent-free, and why it is > much much easier to learn languages when you are a young kid. I read of a study made. They took 6 month old Americans and Japanese and made noises ra-ra-ra-ra-la-ra. When the "la" happened they did something interesting. The babies learned to look up when they heard "la". They did the same thing for year-old children and the Japanese babies did not look up when the word changed to "la". They had already learned that "ra" and "la" were the same and couldn't hear the difference between them. This study fascinates me. How much of the world have I learned to ignore? -- Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/