How Children Learn Language

Learning a language-learning a first language or learning a fourth—is an exceptional accomplishment for anybody. Yet everyone completes this process and does so successfully at least once in their life.

Linguists—those researchers who devote their lives and thoughts to studying the intricacies and nuances of language—call the learning process "doubtless the greatest intellectual feat any one of us is ever required to perform." Yet this achievement is often taken completely for granted. For non-linguists (like most of us), the magnitude of this accomplishment only becomes apparent when we step back and think of everything that goes into the first few faltering steps we take toward language.

An excellent guide to this moment in life is linguist Dr. Charles Yang's book The Infinite Gift: How Children Learn and Unlearn the Languages of the World. Dr. Yang, who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, ably reveals the complexities of the process while also showing us why these complexities are mastered so naturally—and so beautifully—by children all over the world, regardless of the language they're learning. Following his guided tour of language learning, we can even begin to appreciate the astonishing truth that, as he says, "children are infinitely better at learning languages than we are."

In order to appreciate the mechanics and other fine points of language learning, many linguists believe we need to understand one big concept first. The ability to learn a language is, they say, part of the "software" we're born with, running in slightly different ways based on specific data inputs. This "program" is called "universal grammar," and it explains how children can learn so quickly despite being surrounded by unfamiliar sounds, many of which aren't even part of language! "The only way for children to learn something as complex as language," as the theory goes, "is to have known a lot about how language works beforehand, so that a child knows what to expect when immersed in the sea of speech. In other words, the ability to learn a language is innate, hidden somewhere in our genes."

Trial and Error

Of course, not all languages appear to share much in common, and their diversity seems to defy the idea that there could be something universal underlying all languages that is coded into our species at the gene-level. Yet linguists point out that, with careful and meticulous analysis of the structures of world languages, one sees that the places languages diverge from each other are limited, and the ways they diverge are also limited. For example, English sentences follow a pattern of subject-verb-object ("kids learn Spanish") while a Bengali sentence (or a Hindi sentence or a Japanese sentence) follows the pattern of subject-object-verb ("kids Spanish learn"). (Bonus fact: Irish and Scottish Gaelic are two of the few examples of languages that follow the pattern verb-subject-object, as in "learn kids Spanish.")

Yet if there is something universal about language deep down in our genes, why was French class sophomore year so tough? Here Dr. Yang introduces a brilliant and original theory. Clearly, we cannot be 'born into' any specific language—babies born in San Francisco aren't any more inherently predisposed to English than those born in Santiago. What Yang suggests instead is that, over our first few years, we learn to "specialize" in our native language by finding out what sounds, grammar and phrases don't work for our language. "Only the grammar actually used in the child's linguistic environment will not be contradicted, and only the fittest survives. In other words, children learn a language by unlearning all other possible languages."

Hunting for Language

A critical step—perhaps the first step—in this unlearning process is when babies begin to sift the little nuggets of language they hear from all the other noises around them. It seems second nature to us to distinguish speech from all the other sounds we make, but for someone whose introduction to speech and sounds begins in the womb, it may not be.
Yang does say, that even in the womb a baby can begin to pick up on is the rhythm and cadence of speech—what linguists (and poets) call prosody. As Yang suggests, hum a sentence in English and then one in (if you know it) Spanish or Italian. There are broad distinctions between the patterns of stress and how long you hold different syllables between these languages, or between German and French. Scientists have proven that even newborns are sensitive enough to these differences to notice when a speaker switches from one language to another. From the get-go, babies use prosody to pull speech out of, as Yang calls it, "the acoustic mess that conceals consonants, vowels, and words."

A second part of this language scavenger hunt is the process of pulling sounds apart so that they can be combined in different ways. And a part of that process is learning which sounds in a language generate different meanings when they're used. For instance, saying "bat" like an Englishman ("baht") doesn't make it a different word, but saying "cat" does.

Let's take a different case. In some Southeast Asian languages, such as Korean or Japanese, the 'r' and the 'l' do not make words mean different things when they are pronounced. Yet in English, they clearly make a great deal of difference. What is interesting is that studies have shown that Korean babies can easily differentiate between 'r' and 'l.' Yang comments, "[a]s Korean babies grow into Korean adults, a perfectly distinguishable acoustic contrast gets lost; only those sounds that are important to the words in the Korean language are retained."

Language Learning and Lazy Brains

Yang says, "We need to be careful about exactly what is lost in the specialization process. It was once thought that the native language permanently dulls out the universal auditory system available at birth, but the reality turns out to be more complicated. First, it remains true that (sufficiently) young children can move to a new country and speak the language very well; this would not be possible if the auditory system lost the sensitivity to nonnative contrasts altogether."

So it is not that a child (or an adult) suddenly loses the physical capacity to hear distinct 'r' and 'l' sounds, but rather that the (now well-trained) brain has begun taking over and purposely ignoring the differences in sensory input between them. But why does this happen? Does the older brain just get lazy? Yang has a simple answer: well, sorta. The world of language—not to mention the world of sounds—is a complex place, with torrents of sensory data bombarding you most of the time. Cutting a few corners isn't laziness, therefore—it's a survival mechanism, like being able to recognize your alarm clock's bell but ignoring most other noises that might wake you up at 5:30 A.M.

Children's Language Learning Around The World

If you're still a little concerned about where this puts you and your child, you're not alone. Parents all over the world worry about where their children are in their developmental path even just relative to their neighbors, much less relative to all the children in China or Germany. Yang has some solid words of encouragement. "While there are typical behaviors as children utter their earliest words, there is no typical child. All children are different: their vocal tracts have different sizes and shapes, their physiological maturation follows somewhat different schedules, and above all, they have different parents (so they hear different words)… A global perspective for language forces us to assume that children all over the world are on the same footing."

How To Help Children Learn A Second Language

Of course, we know that hearing that your child has her own unique developmental path and process isn't going to stop you from wondering what that path holds, and how you can be a part of it. Taking what we know about language, here is some advice:

If the most critical step of language learning for a child is the process of finding the language—of picking its words and sounds and rhythms out from all the "acoustic mess" around them—then help them find more than one language! This won't mix them up anymore than playing Radiohead and Rachmaninoff will leave them later incapable of telling rock from classical. Play them DVDs or CDs of people speaking in a foreign language, read to them in it if you feel comfortable doing so, and let it be part of their audio environment.

Learning A Second Language At An Early Age

If babies and toddlers specialize in one language because "only the grammar actually used in the child's linguistic environment will not be contradicted, and only the fittest survives," then it is absolutely essential to offer children an environment in which the grammar and vocabulary of another language will be encouraged. Parents should urge their children to use it themselves, experimenting as they would with English. And parents should also make sure that there are positive examples of the language in the home—in some form or another, and not necessarily the parents themselves.

It really seems that earlier is better because earlier is easier. If language learning is also a process of unlearning, the less unlearning that takes place, the better. The more we adapt to one language, the more our brain ignores the subtle inputs which can mean a great deal for another language. Yang recommends thinking of it in terms of distinguishing between colors—if you've become used to thinking of orange and yellow as the same color, you're going to have to see them next to each other many times to begin to see the difference. You certainly can, but the longer you've been thinking of them as the same, the more times you'll have to see them side-by-side. Start out with the rainbow, and the world's a much more colorful place.