Vocal music major here. It is quite likely that by the time they reach university age, students who are majoring in vocal music have had years of experience si

Vocal music major here. It is quite likely that by the time they reach university age, students who are majoring in vocal music have had years of experience singing in a variety of languages. These would typically be Latin, Italian, French and German, along with their native language. This might include choral and solo performance experience. I suspect they have a combination of experience, learned 'coachability', and a greater than average awareness of how to produce the correct sounds. Anecdote: I'm an English speaker, and traveled to The Netherlands on business a few years ago. It was my impression that just about all the Dutch speak English ( and a few other languages ) and it is very difficult for a non-native speaker to attempt to engage them in a conversation in Dutch. They will usually just flip over into English. After a bit of practicing on the plane, I was able to do a few things like order tickets for a movie, and some snacks, and even order food in a restaurant in Dutch (I cheated a bit here, it was a Mexican place, so all the food was in Spanish :) ). It is possible they were just being polite, but my perception was that I came off like a maybe-fluent non-native speaker. In fact I knew about 20 words, but I had a pretty good accent.