Want your child to learn more than one language? Then it’s best to start at an early age, maybe even before they start speaking their first words.
If you’ve ever attempted to learn a new language then you can probably attest to how difficult it is. Research shows that early childhood is the best possible time to learn a second language. Children who are exposed to two languages from birth typically become native speakers of both, while adults often struggle. Proving that though we are wired to learn a language, we can’t always speak it. However, spoken language is “hard-wired” inside the human brain.
Language learning depends on the processing of sounds. Each language uses phonemes (language sounds), which distinguish one language from another with English being the most phonetic language, 44 sounds and 26 letters to do it. There are about 800 sounds total with all the world’s languages combined, and it is said that a baby is born with the ability to distinguish all 800 sounds. This goes to show how malleable and receptive young minds can be.
A mother’s voice is the most distinguished sound the unborn baby hears. And, after birth, the newborn is not only able to tell the difference between their mother’s voice and other voices, but also shows a capability of distinguishing between languages. When a child reaches 10 months of age, the child has already learned how to recognize the sounds of the language spoken by caregivers. When children in a one-language household, get to their first birthday, they start to lose the ability to hear the differences between foreign language sounds.
The window for language stays open until age seven and then slowly closes. Moms your little tikes are wired to be multi-lingual, so it’s time to sign the little one up to learn a new language.
See video on the benefits of a bilingual brain below.
How many language do you and or your kids speak?
