“People who play instruments or listen to a lot of radio programmes are slightly more sensitive to picking up nuances in speech,” says Mikko Sams, professor at the Helsinki University of Technology.
Musicians are for example more sensitive to detecting emotional undertones in speech, and they have an easier time learning foreign languages, explains Sams.
Radio more demanding than television
Sams says radio demands more from the listener than television does.
“Listening to radio demands a heightened form of concentration. And the more you have to concentrate the more you end up learning,” says Sams.
People hear the world differently
Sams has also studied how Finnish brains are honed to detect sounds in Finnish speech that foreigners may not be able to discern. Listening and hearing are closely tied to environment. That said, foreigners hear the Finnish language in a different way than native Finns do.
People learning Finnish may find it impossible to hear or detect certain sounds or sound combinations. Only Finns can hear or properly repeat the word "hääyöaie", a compound of hääyö (“wedding night”) + aie (“intention”). This word is chock full of Finnish phonetic sounds, says Sams.
“These findings are of course baffling to an extent because we are under the illusion that we all hear our surroundings in the same way," adds Sams.
