Link: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/oct/14/focus-on-sounds-to-help-learn-a-language-study-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.

They found that those with higher auditory precision mastered the pronunciation of new languages faster and more accurately than other learners and relied less on the brain’s left sensorimotor system (involved in language processing) when processing foreign-language sounds. Instead, their brain activity patterns were similar to those that occur when the brain processes non-speech sounds.

Letting the days go by...

This is not my beautiful wife!

This reminds me how I used to listen to The Beatles as a kid, long before I learnt English. I did know roughly what the songs are about, but I didn't understand most of the words. I did burn the lyrics deep into my brain by repeat listening, as just sounds.

Then decades later - I'm going somewhere by subway and suddenly I remember She's Leaving Home and play it back in my head after years of not thinking about it. And I realise I can understand (and remember!) every word as it comes up in mind, truly understanding the song for the very first time.

I ended up bursting into tears right there, since it's so emotional. That was such a cool experience.

So, if I'm understanding correctly, the best learners don't try and give the word meaning from what they already know? Maybe that's how children learn.

This is not my beautiful stapler!
This is not my beautiful chair!

I live in Vietnam, and I know very little Vietnamese. But I roam around listening to people talk. It's mostly sounds. Here and there I get something, effortlessly.

I sometimes joke that I'm approaching Vietnamese like a baby would. And, apparently, it's working.

Yeah, it's how I learned German. I could speak it fluently, learned entirely by immersion. No schooling; and my written German is atrocious.

Conversly, I studied French at University for three years, no immersion, and never could get a native speaker to understand me or vice versa. But I could write and read it fairly well.

I wonder what þis says about Esperanto, which is all about logical spelling and consistent rules. It's designed to be trivial to learn, and for sure, þe rules are. Vocab's pretty easy for Westerners, too.

This makes complete sense since "words" are just multiple sounds combined and tethered to a meaning/definition.
This also justifies the phrase, music is a language.
I routinely listen to music in many languages that I do not speak, and have learned a lot of random words this way.

Obligatory https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wIF2zw0IEog

They just figured this out? I thought everyone knew it already. In language classes at my school they just started talking to you in whatever language from day 1. The sounds would start to resolve into (unfamiliar) words after a while, and shortly after that you would start picking up the meanings of the words. Same thing happens when you travel to another country and start hearing the language there.