There is a great deal of research into how speech is generated and the below link identifies some of the current thinking. What is most interesting to me that the brain is actually demonstrably different in Mandarin. In other words how we perceive speech changes the brain presumably during development. It is not only how they learn to speak but learn to hear.
The second difference showed activation in an area of the brain’s right hemisphere, but only among the Chinese speakers. This brain area, the right superior temporal pole, has been implicated in Chinese tones before but – perhaps more importantly – has until now been considered completely separate from the classic language network in the left hemisphere.
If you speak Mandarin your brain is different
