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The womb. That is the simple answer. Babies begin learning language even before they are born. The sounds around them permeate the womb and enter the baby's brain, so that even when they are only a few hours old, they are able to differentiate between sounds so that they are able to tell the difference between their native language that their mother speaks, and a foreign language. In the article, "Why The Baby Brain Can Learn Two Languages At The Same Time", from theconversation.com, "All the world’s languages put together comprise about 800 or so sounds. Each language uses only about 40 language sounds, or “phonemes,” which distinguish one language from another." By birth, babies are able to distinguish between all 800 sounds and identify the unique language that their mother is speaking. This incredible feat shows the influence of speaking to the baby in the womb to help develop their language skills. The interesting aspect of learning a language is that babies are the most receptive to learning a second language. Yet, "by their first birthdays, monolingual infants begin to lose their ability to hear the differences between foreign language sounds." This is significant as it shows that the brain is the most malleable when the baby is young, so that is the most integral time in its development. Further, "Babies from bilingual Spanish-English households are specialized to process the sounds of both languages, Spanish and English." Therefore, this is the time when parents should be implementing different languages into their child's daily learning. A common fear is that since the child is learning two languages, they will not be as advanced in either language as a child is in just one language. It is somewhat similar to a jack of all trades, master of none quandary. But this fear is immediately quelled as "we found that the bilingual babies showed an equally strong brain response to English sounds as the monolingual babies." By 11 months of age the baby specializes in whatever languages are present in their environment. Therefore, if there is both Spanish and English present in their household, they will process both languages. In essence, "Bilinguals have also been found to have increased metalinguistic skills (the ability to think about language per se, and understand how it works)." Infancy is the best time for a baby to learn multiple languages, and they will be at more of an advantage in later life. |
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