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Stop making sense: focus on sounds to help learn a language, study suggests
UK NewsTechnology•October 14, 2026 at 12:01 AMNational

Stop making sense: focus on sounds to help learn a language, study suggests

By Anna Bawden•The Guardian - UK News

Research shows that the best linguists process unfamiliar foreign speech sounds more like non-speech soundsIf you want to get really good at French, Arabic or Hungarian, don’t start with rote learning vocabulary and grammar, focus on how they sound instead, research suggests.A new study of how humans learn modern languages has found that the brains of the most talented linguists hear foreign terms as random noise, not words. Continue reading...

Research shows that the best linguists process unfamiliar foreign speech sounds more like non-speech sounds

If you want to get really good at French, Arabic or Hungarian, don’t start with rote learning vocabulary and grammar, focus on how they sound instead, research suggests.

A new study of how humans learn modern languages has found that the brains of the most talented linguists hear foreign terms as random noise, not words.

Continue reading...

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