Although each language contains a unique set of sounds, scientists have found that babies are born with the ability to distinguish all of them. However, that ability starts to diminish before a baby’s first birthday. After that time babies start to “tune out” or ignore sounds that don’t fit into the patterns of their native language.
I imagine that everyone reading this is quite a bit older than that. So, is there any hope that we can learn to speak a new language?
Since baby brains need personal interaction to learn language, researchers are now working to make language learning technology for adults more social and thus possibly use the brain circuitry used by children.
Scientists at Tokyo Denki University and the University of Minnesota have developed a computer program that uses pictures of people speaking in “motherese,” the slow exaggerated language that parents tend to use with babies. They found that Japanese students exposed to English sounds using this slow and exaggerated speech were able to hear and pronounce these sounds much better.
Tags: babies, learn to speak english
