{
  "id": 14451870,
  "title": "Stop making sense: focus on sounds to help learn a language, study suggests",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/13/stop-making-sense-focus-on-sounds-to-help-learn-a-language-study",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-10-13T23:01:37.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Guardian Science",
    "slug": "guardian-science",
    "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/oct/14/focus-on-sounds-to-help-learn-a-language-study-suggests"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": null,
  "summary": "Research shows that the best linguists process unfamiliar foreign speech sounds more like non-speech sounds If you want to get really good at French, Arabic or Hungarian, don’t start with rote learning vocabulary and grammar, focus on how they sound instead, research suggests. A new study of how humans learn modern languages has found that the brains of the most talented linguists hear foreign…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}