"The richest band, that of the Russians"

Second interview of the series Alain Gerber × Alfred Tomatis in SON Magazine. In no. 31, October 1972, Tomatis explains why each language is first spoken with a specific ear: the French ear registers its selectivity between 1,000 and 2,000 Hz, the Italian between 2,000 and 4,000 Hz, the German covers a very broad band, and the Russian ear — the most welcoming of all — extends from the lowest to the highest frequencies, which explains the virtuosity of the Slavs in learning foreign languages. Tomatis develops his thesis of the “acoustic geography” of idioms (language depends on the climatic impedance of the place), and presents the Electronic Ear as a tool allowing one to give a subject artificially the English, Spanish, Swedish or Russian ear to facilitate learning. Includes a striking experience: the subject on whom another hearing than his own is imposed becomes deaf to his own recorded words.

“SON” Magazine — no. 31 — October 1972
The integration of modern languages
Alfred A. TOMATIS: “THE RICHEST BAND, THAT OF THE RUSSIANS”
Interview gathered by Alain Gerber

Presentation

The Germans do not hear like the French, who themselves do not have the same ear as the Italians… To each region of the globe, to each country, correspond various types of hearing. To speak a language is therefore first of all to adapt one’s own listening to the acoustic frequencies of that language. This is not always feasible: one must then condition the ear. Professor Tomatis, whom SON Magazine presented to you in the previous issue, has invented and developed a precious apparatus: the Electronic Ear, which certain language laboratories — those that have been able to revise outmoded pedagogical conceptions — use with success.

A striking experience

In a Paris laboratory, a British subject is finishing recording a few texts in his native tongue. “Now,” the operator tells him when he puts down the microphone, “you will be able to hear yourself. I will place these headphones on your head.” The man lets it happen with good grace; the recording begins to play back. Astonishment! Our Englishman is incapable of understanding the sentences he pronounced a few minutes earlier.

What has happened? Something very simple. The experiment took place, many years ago now, in the laboratories of Dr Alfred Tomatis. Thanks to the headphones connected to an electronic “ear”, the operator had simply given the subject a hearing that was no longer his own. As a consequence, the subject had become as it were deaf to his own discourse! This anecdote is rich in lessons. Better, it must overturn many received ideas in those who hear it for the first time.

Different types of ears across the world

One might have believed — and the scientists themselves did not stint themselves in this — that at the four corners of the world, men heard in the same way. The research of Dr Tomatis has imposed an urgent revision of this perfectly arbitrary conception. According to his work, conducted from the beginning of the 1950s, it turns out that there exist, according to the regions of the globe, different types of hearing — different “ears” which, broadly, correspond moreover to the various languages. Each of the latter is characterised by a band of selectivity, or particular “passband”.

The French ear, for example, has a selectivity situated between 1,000 and 2,000 hertz.
The Italian ear registers its own between 2,000 and 4,000 hertz.
The Germans’ passband is very broad; it begins in the low frequencies and extends up to 3,000 hertz.
That of the Russians is broader still, since it goes from the lowest sounds to the highest.

It should not surprise that there is a relation between hearing and language. As Tomatis had previously shown: the voice contains only what the ear hears, “we speak with our ear”. In fact, it should not even surprise that there exist throughout the world different types of receptivity to sound messages. “Could it be explained otherwise,” writes René La Borderie, specialist in the pedagogy of modern languages, “that the southerners with their singing accent are more disposed than others to the acquisition of the Italian language? Could it be explained otherwise that opera was born in Italy and that Italian is the only language perfectly suited to operatic singing?”

The impedance of the place and acoustic geography

There are many ways to explain these phenomena. The least contestable is no doubt to invoke the influence of the ambient milieu, in particular of climatic conditions. “You will notice,” observes Dr Tomatis, “that it is easy to speak English in England, whereas it is very difficult in Spain. It is the impedance of the place that determines the posture and adaptation of the ear. The so-called ‘fluid’ languages, for example, are spoken in humid environments, notably on islands. The multiplicity of idioms is bound up with the fact that, the impedance changing with the place, receptivity is transformed and consequently a single language modifies itself. This is why attempts of the Esperanto kind harbour a purely mythical hope: a unique language will always vary according to the places in which one finds oneself.”

Thus the American twangs, contrary to the Englishman, the Italian or the German. But when an Englishman, an Italian or a German settles in the United States, he soon begins to twang like the Indian who was the first occupant of the country. Any language spoken in the United States will incline towards the resonance of the place, which is very rich in 1,500 hertz. One may note in passing that English as it is spoken on the American continent is much better perceived by the French ear than pure Oxford English. Which is to say that there exist, from this single point of view (unrelated to grammar or vocabulary), greater or lesser affinities between languages. A Frenchman, for example, will learn Spanish more easily than English.

The “gift of tongues”

To speak a language is first of all to adapt one’s own listening to the acoustic frequencies of that language. Thus the “gift of tongues” is not so much the gift of speaking them as of hearing them. It has long been observed that the Slavs, as a rule, displayed a veritable virtuosity in learning foreign idioms. Many spoke several languages fluently. The explanation is simple. Their hearing is characterised by so welcoming a selectivity that it can include without difficulty the passbands of other languages.

Conversely, the impossibility of reproducing effectively a foreign language is but a form of deafness. “Faced with an unaccustomed sound information,” Tomatis further explains, “the ear changes from top to bottom to take another well-defined posture, different in every point from that in which the mother tongue has fixed it. It may well be that it is not capable of accomplishing this work of accommodation.”

Conditioning the ear — the role of the Electronic Ear

Fortunately, all is not lost in such cases. By certain procedures, one can come to the aid of the failing ear, condition it so as to create artificially that receptivity which it lacks. “By modifying the hearing of the subject,” one may read in a brochure issued by the Language Centre directed by Alfred Tomatis, “by teaching him to hear in another way than that to which he is accustomed by his mother tongue, one triggers another way of speaking, another mode of expression characteristic of the language to be studied. This audio-vocal effect entails modifications bearing on the timbre, on the organisation of the phonatory apparatus, on the use of the resonance cavities, laryngeal and supra- and infra-glottic, on the laryngeal tone, on the breathing, on the mimicry — so many modifications which react in a chain through reflex ignition spreading by stages to the whole morphological structure of the subject.”

This intervention can be carried out thanks to an apparatus invented and developed by Dr Tomatis: the Electronic Ear, which we summarily described in our previous issue. This apparatus allows the passband to be tightened or extended at will. One can thus give a subject the English ear, the Spanish ear, the Swedish ear, etc., or the ear of a great vocalist such as Caruso. Conditioned to hear himself like a native of Oxford, the subject begins to speak English as if he had himself been born in that city, provided he is familiar with the English language. The whole problem is, obviously, to make this advantage permanent. This is achieved after a certain number of sessions.

An in-depth integration

The principal interest of this method is that it does not only help in learning, but leads to a genuine integration of modern languages. To speak, it is not enough to reproduce the letter of a language; one must restore its spirit. For A. Tomatis, “to possess a language that one decides to absorb is to use it to the point of expressing oneself, thinking, existing through it”. The Electronic Ear permits this in-depth assimilation. The proof: the subject who has done some studies in English and on whom the English ear is imposed naturally tends to use the rules of English grammar, without any intellectual effort on his part.

It is the whole structure of the language that installs itself at one stroke. Better still, the very psychology of the subject is affected; his behaviour undergoes modifications. Place a Frenchman under the Electronic Ear and ask him to draw a line: under French frequency, he will draw a horizontal line; under Spanish frequency, a descending line — all these tracings being in direct relation with the curve of frequencies.

Another observation: anyone given electronically an acoustic receptivity different from their own immediately begins to change posture. Under the German ear, for example, one sees them straighten, push from the throat, speak more loudly and stand absolutely upright, perpendicular to the axis of sound thrust. This is enough to show the influence of language on conduct. This influence is hardly less marked on the mentality, the way of reasoning and of conceiving. Besides, it is a well-known fact that when one resides for some time abroad, one ends up taking on the mental attitudes of the country.

In the assimilation of an idiom, it is therefore the whole being that is in question. We are far from the indigestible absorption of vocabulary lists with which the near-totality of our modern-language studies was confounded, when we were at the lycée! The discoveries of Dr Tomatis confirm one of the fundamental intuitions of the twentieth century: man is a whole.

The polyglot and the Electronic Ear

Take a polyglot and, while conversing with him, impose on him different types of hearing by means of an Electronic Ear: in turn and without his knowing it, he will begin to speak Russian with the Russian ear, Italian with the Italian ear, Arabic with the Arabic ear, intimately persuaded that he continues to express himself in French. Remove his auditory structure from a Chinese, and he can no longer even think! Such facts have compelled the revision of many ideas previously held about the methods likely to bring about the acquisition of foreign languages.

The critique of language laboratories

In truth, traditional pedagogy in this matter has been contested for many years. From this contestation were born the language laboratories, which soon began to proliferate. Alongside school or university, one witnessed an impressive flowering of audio-visual systems. Miracle methods, if one was to believe the advertising. Alas! this grandeur was soon followed by decadence. Numerous laboratories fell into neglect. Why? Because in most cases, the contestation bore more on the form than on the substance. “Too often,” Alfred Tomatis judges, “the famous so-called ‘audio-visual’ methods were merely the transposition of old pedagogical recipes. Many of these systems rested on no scientific basis, and, in particular, they ignored the starting point of any learning: the relation between ear and mouth, between hearing and phonation.”

Indubitably, the methods employed by language laboratories constitute, to this day, the best means of assimilating an idiom. But this assimilation itself depends directly on the way the auditory apparatus has been previously conditioned. It is willingly declared in Dr Tomatis’s entourage that “all the ingenuity put at the service of pedagogy will avail nothing if the door of entry, that is to say the ear, remains closed to the linguistic message. One must first make sure that the door is perfectly open, that hearing is ready to receive the particular sounds of the language it must assimilate. Without this, efforts will be vain.” This is where the Electronic Ear comes onto the scene. Thanks to its collaboration, the laboratories will be able to attain their goal fully, reducing the number of their failures to almost nothing.

It must be made clear that this is only a complementary technique. The apparatus itself only predisposes the student. It in no way exempts him from learning the grammar and vocabulary of the language he wishes to speak. On the other hand, by placing him psychologically in a kind of complicity with the object of his study, it provides him with the motivations indispensable to his success: one learns nothing, and certainly not a foreign language, without putting to use a whole system, at once conscious and unconscious, of desires.

The astonishing results with children

The adaptation of receptivity may take from one to two months if the subject’s hearing is of good quality. If, on the contrary, his ear is damaged, it is indispensable to begin by restoring it to its normal state, which requires about three months of effort.

There exist indeed, let us recall, “elective deafnesses” of which account must be taken. “Certain companies,” Alfred Tomatis recounts, “entertain the project of having English, or Russian, spoken by all their executives, or by a whole department. This is an absurdity! There are people who, for all sorts of reasons, are deaf to frequencies above 2,000 hertz, for example. How could they learn English? This deficiency explains, moreover, the failure of very brilliant subjects in language agrégations. It is obvious that these persons must be submitted to a special treatment even before conditioning their ear.”

The problem arises less often with children, whose auditory plasticity is astonishing. If a five-year-old subject, of an American father and a Hungarian mother, attends school in France, he will speak the three languages with ease. The only mistake not to make, according to Tomatis, would be for the parents at home — thinking they were helping the child — to address him in French, without knowing this language well and getting tangled up in idiomatic expressions: “the channels must not be confused,” he concludes.

Towards the civilisation of sound

Nonetheless, for all those who, whatever their age, wish to assimilate a foreign language, every hope is permitted. Allied to the most modern audio-visual techniques, the Electronic Ear allows them rapid progress. In a minimum of six months, the integration of a language can be achieved. Six months may seem a great deal compared with what certain laboratories advertise, but what is the share of duly verified success on either side?

We were saying last month that Dr Tomatis’s work does not appear to satisfy everyone. However, regarding the particular problem of modern languages, the list of his adversaries, endless fifteen years ago, dwindles every day.

In Paris, a well-known language laboratory uses the Electronic Ear. In many others, account is taken of the conclusions of Alfred Tomatis. For example, one increasingly avoids using cheap tape recorders that risk not only compromising a good transmission of the message one wishes to hear, but also putting up against integration all kinds of obstacles difficult to surmount. A new era is perhaps about to open. Not so long ago, many people agreed in saying that from the age of fourteen, true bilingualism was no longer possible. Already, this limit has been indefinitely pushed back. And the Electronic Ear is still a little-known apparatus! This is enough to say that, in the learning of foreign languages, an important mutation is in preparation, of which we can yet record only the early signs. Everywhere it is said that we have entered the civilisation of the image; might it not be also, might it not be rather, the civilisation of sound?

Place of this interview in the series

This interview is the second of a series of fifteen published monthly by Alain Gerber in the journal SON Magazine from September 1972 to December 1977. For the complete contents and access to the other interviews, see the mother-article of the series.

Source: Alain Gerber, “The integration of modern languages — Alfred A. Tomatis: The richest band, that of the Russians”, SON Magazine no. 31, Paris, October 1972. Digitisation: Christophe Besson, June 2010.