Humans are vocal learners. Babies start to learn language by listening to the sounds around them and repeating the sounds they hear. As they learn more sounds, they also learn how those sounds are combined into words, and how to link the words to meaning. But there’s another element of sound that you might not think of, although if you’ve ever interacted with a baby, you’ve probably used it automatically: music. Think about how people sound when they’re using “baby talk” – it’s a sing-song rhythmic way of speaking, not an even monotone. Babies respond to rhythm and pitch (whether a sound is high or low) and new research is finding surprising links between vocabulary and song. The Harvard scientist Dr. Gottfried Schlaug has found that for some people who have lost the ability to speak coherently due to brain disorders, it’s possible to have them sing the same words without the same problems.

Music is also connected to dance and to movement, and new studies are looking into the connection between dance, rhythm, and vocabulary. According to researcher Aniruddh D. Patel of the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, “vocal learning creates links between the hearing and movement centers of the brain.” The areas of the brain that process music overlap with the ones that process language. Patel was fascinated by Snowball, the dancing cockatoo, in part because birds are also vocal learners; baby birds learn their songs by imitating the adult birds around them.

What this may mean for vocabulary study is that adding movement to your study program could boost your brain’s ability to learn and remember. By moving your body, you’re stimulating the shared area of the brain that links rhythm and music to words. Set your vocabulary words to music, and you’ll generally find that they’re easier to remember. What’s more, getting your body moving will increase the flow of oxygen to your brain, and that will improve your mental functioning. Can you dance your way to a better vocabulary? There’s only one way to find out – so get up and dance!