Learning Language: First Sounds and Words Can anything top the thrill of hearing a baby s first word?!! It s a moment that every parent and loving caregiver looks forward to. So why is it so special? Maybe because so much of the enjoyment of relationships depends on being able to communicate with one another. And we know that once that little one starts to talk, our relationship will go to a whole new and exciting level! Designed to communicate Just consider for a minute these astonishing facts: Learning about how children become communicators may be one of the most fascinating areas of child development there is. Studies of children in societies all over the world leave no doubt that human beings are wired from the start for communicating. follow the same developmental steps, at about the same age, regardless of whether they are learning Thai, Swahili, English or even American Sign Language. There are areas of the brain that are specifically dedicated to understanding language and producing language. These areas of the brain begin operating before a baby is even born as early as the sixth month of pregnancy. Even though oral language learning is incredibly complex, children almost always learn all that s needed from the language of ordinary family and social life, without any direct teaching. Not only is nothing special required in order for young children to learn to use language, but it takes a major trauma, such as severe abuse or brain injury, to throw language development off track to the point that it s permanently limited. And even if trauma damages the language areas of the brain, if it happens early enough, the brain has an incredible ability to adapt and recover the abilities that were lost. There s no doubt about it children are made to communicate with language! But exactly what do we mean when we talk about language? What are all the different skills that children need to communicate verbally? How do those skills develop over the first few years? INSIDE KNOWING CHILDREN Designed to Communicate Learning the Sounds of Language Ready for Anything Child-Directed Speech Speaking Like the Natives Playing with Sounds Is that Normal? Individual Differences She Talked! Language Learning is Hard Work! Nurturing Early Language
p.2 Learning the Sounds of Language Did you know that the word infant actually comes from a Latin word that means incapable of speech? And it s true no newborn yet has greeted the delivery room staff with, Thanks for the help, folks! It was getting cramped in there! But that doesn t mean that he hasn t been learning about speech far from it! Do you hear what I hear?? Take Sam, for example. Even before Sam was born, he was learning about the sounds of speech. Although his hearing system wouldn t be completely mature until after birth, Sam s ears began detecting sounds around the sixth month of pregnancy. During the final trimester, he could pick up an amazing amount of sound, even though the sounds were muffled by his mother s body. Unborn babies like Sam, it turns out, are especially sensitive to the rhythms of speech, or speech prosody. Speech prosody is the music-like quality of speech the way the tone of voice goes up and down, pauses in speech, and patterns of loud and soft to emphasize certain words or syllables. Just think of the way someone speaking Spanish sounds different than someone speaking Swedish or Korean, apart from the words they re saying. Researchers have found that newborns are especially tuned in to speech prosody, especially the speech they ve heard most often and most clearly that of their own mothers. As soon as Sam is born, he can tell us a lot about what he learned about speech while he was still inside his mother just by the way he reacts to familiar voices: Try this... There s no need to strap a headset to your pregnant tummy or buy some special contraption to transmit sounds to your developing baby. By the last three months of pregnancy, a fetus can hear nearly all of the normal sounds in the immediate environment that you do, including the music on the stereo and the sounds of family member s voices. This means that it isn t at all silly to talk to your baby in the womb, or read to her or play music for her. In fact, it can be a great way for older siblings and other family members to start bonding with the baby before she s even born! Because Sam heard his mother s voice so often during pregnancy, she notices that he reacts differently to her voice than to the other female voices he hears. Even when he can t see her face, he knows her voice and begins looking around for her, waving his arms in excitement. Because Sam s mother only spoke English while she was pregnant, Sam became very familiar with the unique prosody of the English language. When Sam hears his Grandma Greta speaking English, he gets more excited than when he hears her speak German. But there s one feat that Sam can do that surprises everyone. During pregnancy, Sam s dad would often read a children s book called Who Loves Me? to the growing tummy that held Sam. Within days after he was born, Sam s dad noticed that Sam acted more interested when he read Who Loves Me? than when he read other books to him, books that he hadn t heard while he was in the womb. It seems that Sam s hearing system was so attuned to the rhythms of human speech that he could now tell the difference between the familiar rhythms of one story and the unfamiliar rhythms of another!
p.3 Ready for Anything! Isn t it amazing how much an infant already knows about the sounds of speech long before she ever makes a sound herself? Her hearing system and the part of her brain that processes those sounds and stores them in memory have been hard at work helping her get to know the sounds of the language she will eventually speak. In fact, babies are able to hear many more distinct speech sounds at birth than you and I are as adults. You see, every spoken language has a set of speech sounds, called phonemes, that distinguish it from other languages. English, for example, has 45 distinct phonemes that include the sounds made by individual letters as well as the sounds made by letter combinations, like /sh/. Other languages have phonemes that English does not. German and Swedish have vowels with umlauts, Mandarin Chinese has a consonant blend /hs/, and Zulu has twelve unique phonemes that could be described as clicks. Now the amazing part: Researchers have discovered that babies are born with the ability to hear the subtle differences between all phonemes found in all languages of the world! In other words, each baby is fully equipped to learn the language of his community, wherever that community is on the planet! (continued on following page) Child-directed speech: Have you ever noticed how common it is for people to talk differently to young babies? It turns out that in most languages adults, and even older children, tend to talk in that special voice used only for babies, a voice that s a bit higher, more exaggerated in prosody, slower, and with shorter sentences and phrases. Deaf mothers, too, tend to use sign language in a slower, more exaggerated way with their infants. Some people call it baby talk, but language experts call it child-directed speech. Sure, it s simple and cute but did you know that it s exactly what babies need to hear in order to most quickly pick up the sounds of language? Research shows that babies actually prefer the exaggerated style of child-directed speech and pay attention longer when adults use it. And, of course, the more they pay attention to speech, the quicker they learn it. But babies aren t only learning about the sounds of the words. As babies get older, adults tend to emphasize the emotional content of what they are saying to babies and the babies, in turn, pay more attention to face-voice combinations, such as when a stern-sounding no-no is matched with a frowning face. So child-directed speech not only helps children learn the sounds and words of their language but also helps them learn the social and emotional parts of language, which are just as important for communicating. Fascinated by young children? Want to learn more about how they grow and learn? Visit ChildWise Resources on the Web Other Knowing issues Knowing in MP3 format Becoming Childwise a blog about the fascinating world of early development www.childwiseresources.com
p.4 Speaking like the natives... But that ability doesn t last for long and it doesn t need to. You see, the developing brain is very efficient. As Joonhee s brain is flooded with the sounds of Korean, the brain connections that will identify the specific language sounds of Korean are strengthened so that she can hear them even more clearly clearly enough to eventually make them herself. But she hasn t heard Spanish or Swahili or English. So the brain connections that could at first distinguish the phonemes unique to those languages aren t used, so they wither away. With neural connections of the brain, it s use it or lose it! So by the time Joonhee is a year old, a lot of the ability to distinguish the phonemes she hasn t heard is gone. But the human brain is amazingly adaptive, especially when it s young. When Joonhee s family relocated to England when she was four, she was immediately immersed in the sounds of a language she had never heard before. But early childhood is the time during a person s development when the brain is changing and growing the most new neural pathways are being produced and called into service and new connections are much more easily created than at any other time in life. As a result, Joonhee s brain was able to rewire itself so that she could once again detect the phonemes of English. Because she experienced the new language while her brain was still growing and changing by leaps and bounds, she would eventually become as good at speaking and hearing English as she was Korean. Her parents, on the other hand, no matter how hard they tried, never could distinguish or make certain language sounds in English. Language Learning in Action So what are the implications for language learning in children? There are lots, including: Learning a second language, and even a third, as well as a native-speaker is most successful when children are under the age of 7. Learning language, even learning more than one at a time, can best be accomplished when children are immersed in the everyday use of the language. Although it might seem that immersing young children in more than one language at a time would be confusing, they actually have an amazing ability to group the phonemes of each language together in their memory they same way the phonemes were grouped when spoken. Although children learning two languages may occasionally use a word or grammar structure from one language when speaking the other, they very rarely make similar errors in pronouncing the phonemes of each language.
Playing with sounds Although hearing the speech of others is important to babies language learning, it s just as important that they begin playing with the language sounds they can make. When babies reach about two months, they begin making their own speech sounds what we call babbling and cooing. Nearly all babies begin babbling around the same age and make the same initial sounds, no matter what the language around them is. Even deaf children babble aloud in the same way at first. But by six months old, babies babbling sounds more like the language in their environment. Just like with the sounds they can hear, the sounds that babies can make change according to the language sounds they are surrounded by. This is even true with deaf babies surrounded by signing adults by ten months old, they ve stopped babbling out loud and instead have begun to babble with their hands and fingers! Six-month-old Srinivas loves to entertain himself by babbling! And, of course, the attention he gets from his family is good, too! But right now the only thing he might be trying to say is hey, listen to what I can do! Instead, Srinivas babbling is more like exercising and practicing. It s a bit like kicking and waving his arms is for his physical development he s not trying to go anywhere or do anything he s just learning what the muscles in his arms and legs can do. In the same way, his babbling is the best way for Srinivas to develop the muscles in his lips, tongue and throat that he ll later use to make the sounds he hears. He s learning what his voice can do and how to change it! Is That Normal??? Individual Differences Ask anyone who has a lot of experience with young children and they will tell you every child has his or her own timeline for language learning. Not only are they different in when they hit early language milestones, they also differ in style. For instance, different infants have different favorite babbling sounds. When they begin saying words, some will tend to learn more names of objects while others will focus on action words or on social words and commands. Temperament differences also affect the way babies will begin using language. For example, even young babies differ in their willingness to take risks some take a cautious approach to life and others are born daredevils! When learning language, the cautious child tends to experiment less with sounds and words, trying fewer variations and waiting until he thinks he can say it just like it sounds before he ll try it out loud. The risk-taker, on the other hand, experiments with lots of different sounds and words while learning the conventional or right pronunciation, not really minding that he makes mistakes. One of the most important reasons that children differ in their language development is because of the amount of language that they hear on a daily basis. Does hearing a lot of talking matter? You bet it does! Research shows that children who who heard a lot of rich language in their early years have bigger vocabularies and, as a result, do better in reading and writing in elementary school. So what s normal? The range for language learning is wide. For example, some children can say the /t/ sound as early as 2 years old; others don t consistently pronounce it until first grade. The appearance of first words also varies widely from 8 months to as late as 18 months. Early talkers don t have any overall advantage, though they seem to simply be highly motivated to talk, saying words as soon as they learn their meaning. Late talkers aren t necessary behind in any other way, either. Many of them will have caught up to their agemates in a year or so. But late babbling and talking isn t something to be ignored it can be an early sign of hearing problems or other developmental delays. So if you re concerned don t hesitate to seek a professional opinion. The earlier problems are discovered, the earlier children can receive the support they need. p.5
p.6 She Talked!! And then comes the exciting time when babies start putting sounds together into actual words. As they do, two skills are developing at the same time: they are learning to say the word like Mommy does and they are learning to understand exactly what Mommy means when she says it. Many babies begin saying their first words by around 10 to 12 months. But babies always understand more words than they can say. The average one-year-old understands the meaning of around 70 words, but can usually say fewer than 10. Not surprisingly, the first words that children learn and then say are family names, pets names, and familiar objects, like bottle and blankie. They also learn frequently used commands, like No!, social words, like bye-bye, and a few actionrelated words, like up and more. New words are slowly added to their vocabularies over the next six months, 1 to 3 words each month that are mostly labels for familiar objects. Most of babies first attempts at words are those that have the easiest sounds for them to make, like bye-bye and nigh-nigh. In fact, it s interesting to note that in every language, the words that mean mother and father sound very similar to English mama, dada, or papa some of the easiest phonemes for all babies to say. Which is a very happy circumstance, since parents the world over want those to be the first words out of their babies mouths!...and talked, and talked, and talked. Then, usually between 18 and 24 months, when they can say around 50 words, most children experience an amazing increase in new word learning a growth spurt of words! During this time, toddlers are adding an incredible number of words to their vocabulary at least one new word a day and sometimes several! Researchers have found that children at this age can actually learn the meaning of a new word after one exposure, a feat they call fast mapping. So what happened?? Scientists believe the naming explosion occurs because of several other changes that are happening around the same time. First of all, the memory area of the brain is developing, helping children remember words more easily and quickly. Secondly, the muscles of the mouth, tongue and throat are becoming more coordinated and controllable, giving young children the equipment that they need to say more words. But the most dramatic development is that children have an important aha moment. They have figured out the secret that, not only do some things have names, but all things have names. Researchers call this the naming insight. Suddenly they become fascinated by learning the names for everything!
p.7 Language Learning is Hard Work! During this time of rapid vocabulary building, children are taking a problem-solving approach to pronouncing words in an adult way, which can be pretty challenging for little mouths. A child might use any of these different strategies for saying hard new words: Make it shorter ba for bottle. Say the main sound again bottle is now baba. Skip that middle, pesky sound bu-fie for butterfly Fill in a sound he can say for one he can t guck for duck and wabbit for rabbit. Say all the parts he can so it sounds really close pasgetti for spaghetti and nakpin for napkin. All this hard work to say words really shows how determined they are to communicate! will make many mistakes as they learn to pronounce words like everything else that s learned, it takes lots of practice. In fact, some sounds aren t correctly pronounced by alll children until 2 nd or 3 rd grade. So does it help for adults to correct those mistakes? To be honest, hardly ever. It usually ends up in frustration with a child who will be reluctant to try again. don t say the sounds wrong because they don t know how the right way sounds they re just not equipped yet to say it like an adult would. Remember, children always can hear the right sounds before they can make them. By seven or eight years of age, nearly all of the pronunciation errors that young children make will have corrected themselves with practice and with the development of their vocal machinery. It s by practicing over and over in regular conversation, not by being corrected, that children eventually get it right. One child development expert told the story of a friend with a 2½year-old daughter who repeatedly pronounced music, ju-jic. When her father made one more effort to correct her, in frustration she replied, Wait til I big. Then I say ju-jic, Daddy!
p.8 Nurturing early language The more we know about all that young children need to learn and be able to do in order to use language well, the more we can appreciate how truly amazing it is that they do so handily! And the ways you can support them are so simple: Talk, talk, talk! Remember, young children learn about language by hearing language! Even newborns benefit from hearing you talk to them, especially when you use that special way of talking that catches their attention most. So talk to infants when you re changing their diaper or feeding them, talk to toddlers as you re having a snack or buckling them in their car seat, and talk to preschoolers about.well, everything! When they ask you one of their endless questions, instead of giving an answer, ask them what they think that could start a long and very interesting chat! Have conversations. Read children s books. You might think that children could just as easily learn language by hearing it on TV or from hearing other people talking to each other. But studies have consistently shown that, in order for babies to really learn language well, they need to not only hear talking but they need to be engaged in conversation! One reason is because children, especially infants, are more attentive to live human faces, especially when the person is making direct eye-contact, so they gather much more language information from a real conversation partner. It s also only in conversation that very young children get the feedback about their own attempts to talk that will encourage them to keep trying. And remember, learning requires practice, practice, practice! So don t just talk to children encourage them to talk to you, too. Reading to young children, even to babies, has so many benefits - they can t all be listed here! One of the reasons that reading to children is so helpful to their language development is that when we read to young children, we tend to model a higher quality of language than we use during conversation: we speak more clearly and slowly, enunciating each word instead of slurring or dropping final word sounds; we use more correct grammar (because that s what s written); and we emphasize, and even exaggerate, the inflections of the language, such as the sound of a question or an exclamation. All of these characteristics of reading aloud help children learn spoken language. Make reading to children a regular habit not only are there huge benefits for them but it can also become a very enjoyable time for you, too (even if you do have to read Hop on Pop for the thousandth time!). Knowing is written by Kathy L. Reschke, Ph.D., ChildWise Resources. Reproduction of this publication is subject to the limitations of the purchasing agreement. See the ChildWise website for more details.