Language and music are two of my passions (I was a professional harpist in my younger days). And while language acquisition is well documented in child development, I studied the acquisition of musical understanding in children for my college thesis. It turns out that children learn music as part of their natural maturation, side by side with their understanding of language and their world.
But then I wondered, what about the world? Would ALL children learn like this? Are these parallels fundamental to humans around the globe? I couldn’t run experiments that large, but I studied the literature concerning language and music across many cultures. I called it Ethnomusicolinguistics. And in my interpretation, music and language indeed rise in us together, starting from infancy. The more we encourage exposure and lessons, the higher they rise.
I always infuse my language with music and hope the melody makes the journey.
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