The Power of Sound

Language is Listening!

Quick question: how many languages do you think exist in the world?

The answer might surprise you. There are about 7,000 languages spoken around the world today.

And those are only the languages that are still alive. Thousands of other languages have disappeared throughout human history. Languages are constantly changing, separating, mixing, and sometimes dying out.

Even your own language probably sounded very different a few hundred years ago.

Now here's another question:

How many of those languages have a written form?

Far fewer.

Many languages have traditionally been passed from one generation to the next mainly through speaking and listening. And only a relatively small number of the world's languages are widely used for higher education, publishing, government, and other formal purposes.

This tells us something very important about language:

Language is sound first. Text comes later.

We Learn Language Through Sound

Humans were speaking languages long before they started writing them down.

For most of human history, if you wanted to learn a language, you learned by listening to the people around you. Children still learn their first language this way today.

They hear thousands and thousands of hours of language before they ever learn to read.

Writing is incredibly useful, but writing is a system humans created to represent language. The letters on a page are not the language itself.

The real language lives in the sounds people make.

Letters Can Trick You

One problem with reading is that letters can sometimes give you the wrong idea about how something actually sounds.

Take a word like orange. English and French both write the word in a very similar way, but the pronunciation is quite different.

Or look at a word like impossible. You can find very similar-looking words in English, French, and Spanish. When you see them on a page, they look closely related.

But when people actually speak, each language gives the word its own sounds, rhythm, and pronunciation.

Your eyes see similarities. Your ears hear the differences.

Think About Your Own Name

There is an easy way to understand this.

Has someone from another country ever had trouble pronouncing your name?

Maybe they could see your name perfectly. They could read every letter. But when they tried to say it, something sounded wrong.

Why?

It is probably not because they cannot read. It is because they have not heard your name enough times.

They are looking at the letters and using the sound system of their own language to guess the pronunciation.

But your name does not really live in those letters.

Your name has a sound.

Once someone hears you say your name several times, they have a much better model to copy.

The same thing happens when you learn English.

Listen First, Then Use the Text

This is why listening should be a major source of input when you are learning a language.

Reading is extremely helpful. A script can help you discover a word you missed. Captions can help you connect sounds with spelling. Reading can also help you learn vocabulary much faster.

But whenever possible, let the text support the sound rather than replace it.

Try listening first. Give your ears a chance to hear the language before your eyes see it.

Then read the script and check what you missed. After that, listen again.

Now the text is doing its best job: helping you understand the language you are hearing.

Train Your Ears

When learning English, it is easy to spend most of your study time looking at words: textbooks, vocabulary lists, grammar exercises, subtitles, apps, and websites.

But remember that English is not just something you see on a page.

It is something people say.

It has rhythm. It has stress. Words become shorter. Sounds connect. Different speakers pronounce things differently.

You can learn about these things from a book, but eventually your ears have to learn to recognize them in real time.

So give your ears plenty of English.

Listen first. Use text when you need it. Then go back and listen again.

After all, humans have been learning languages through sound for thousands of years.

And here's something interesting: you're reading this right now.

Click below and listen to the audio version instead. Then ask yourself a simple question:

Does it sound even better than it reads?