By Amy Cheng Language is always present, as a sign of civilization, society, and class. It is fundamental to the way individuals interact, and entirely adjustable to different levels of formality. Bluntly speaking, no human can thrive without language. But babies emerge biologically unable to participate in conversation—throat and voice development happens six months after they’ve been pushed into a world of sound. And beyond needing the physiological structures, they still have to: pick up on the alphabetical sounds that make up a language: vibrate those observations into sounds: assign complex strings of syllables to things and actions and descriptions: discover grammar: respond to and have conversation with respect to situation and tone and mood: adjust to accents and dialects and slang, all in the timespan of a couple of years. Some even have to do this all for multiple languages. In the USA alone, there are hundreds of tongues spoken in addition to English! How do infants do it? The entire ordeal of learning how to communicate starts before the baby is ever exposed to air—it starts in the womb. It takes 30 weeks for the structures for hearing to develop so that in the last 10 weeks of pregnancy they can distinguish between sounds, particularly the vowels in their mother’s voices. When they are born, the first sound all babies make is the iconic waaaaaa waaaaa waaa waa of crying. It’s a natural noise, as simple as breathing outward with more urgency, and relatively obscure in meaning. There are distinctions though—sharp, panicked cries signal pain; short, giggly ones represent happiness; and other variations come off as hunger or discomfort. At this stage, the baby is using intonation to communicate with the only easily formed sound. Infants are also listening as best they can. Just as they caught sharp vowels from their wombs, so do they also latch onto stressed sounds. When we meet a baby, we might say repetitive phrases like, “Hi! How are you doing, you lovely, lovely baby. Aren’t you cute, yes you are, yes you are. Ohhh you’re so precious, you are!” This is hardly normal speech. But we say it all anyway, knowing how silly it is to be talking to someone who can’t hardly understand. At this stage, it isn’t quite what we say but how we say it that matters. We vary the pitch of what we’re saying to a baby; in that example, the pitch of our voice would slide up and down on the sounds you, cute, are, and the cious in precious. Even if the baby doesn’t understand anything that’s just been said, they can still pick up on those stressed sounds. This is more applicable when we point out things to babies. Naturally, we stress the sounds of whatever it is we’re introducing (doggie, kitty, mommy). Gradually, babies learn to associate the stressed noises (dog, kit, mom) with what they refer to. Next comes making vibrations and specific sounds. At around six weeks of age, children can start making vowels like ohh, aa, and ee. At six months, they can connect those vowels with consonants, like maa or daa that can sound like the ever exciting mama or dada. Regardless of the meaning we grace those sounds though, the baby probably can’t distinguish that pair of sounds from any of the other nonsense babble they make. What they can notice though is the beaming reaction they get from cooing mama and repeat it, until they learn to associate the sound mama with the word mama. In a year, the child will be able to utter actual words, typically those same “content” words that were stressed earlier, like dog or cat. By the time that they’re two years old, they can usually handle simple sentences and respond to simple commands or questions. And when they enter kindergarten, most children are well versed in most of the grammar rules, or at least the ones that apply to common conversation. Exposure to reading and writing will do much of the rest of natural language learning. CitationsCrystal, David. Little Book of Language. Yale University Press, 2011. Kuhl, Patricia. “The Linguistic Genius of Babies.” Patricia Kuhl: The Linguistic Genius of Babies | TED Talk, www.ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_genius_of_babies/transcript#t-585371. Linguistic Society of America, www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/faq-how-do-we-learn-language. “While in Womb, Babies Begin Learning Language from Their Mothers.” UW News, www.washington.edu/news/2013/01/02/while-in-womb-babies-begin-learning-language-from-their-mothers/. Suggested ReadingsHow Language Works by David Crystal
Little Book of Language by David Crystal How Languages are Learned (Oxford Handbooks for Language Teachers) by Patsy M. Lightbown The Complete Guide to Learning a Language: How to Learn a Language with the Least Amount of Difficulty and the Most Amount of Fun by Gill James
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