How a child learns to speak

Language is one of the most incredible things that we are able to do. It would even be possible for Homo sapiens to be the only creature on the planet that we have this capacity. Only dolphins show Language indications, Although we are still unable to understand it.

We seem facts to speak and understand language. The specialized areas of the brain such as the areas of Broca and Wernicke, suggest that genetics provides us with at least the neurological foundations of language.

Linguistics is, of course, a different matter, but it overcomes itself with psychology a bit, especially in regard to Language development in babies and children. The skill that young children have to learn language - or even two or three languages ​​simultaneously - is one of the indicative that there is something special in our brain at those ages. In this psychology-online article we will explain everything you need to know about How a child learns to speak.

1. The first sounds of children
2. The word of the word
3. Children's first words
4. The grammatical constructions
5. Up to what age do children learn to speak?

The first sounds of children

It all starts in childhood. From birth to 6 months, babies do a lot of noise. They shriek, growl, roar and shout. They also lulled, what later will become vowels. 6 months to 10 months, produce more complicated sounds called Balbuceos. The first consonants can be combined with vowels to make syllables. Soon, other consonants add.

Parents play an important role in forming children's language. Even being preprogrammed in a certain way to use language, we need to learn a specific language from the people around us. Mothers typically They adjust their speech to adjust to the child's level. This language is called "Motherese". It is found in practically all cultures on the planet, and has certain common characteristics:

• The phrases are very short.
• There is a lot of repetition and redundancy
• There is a melodious quality
• It contains many special baby words.

It is also embedded in the context of the surroundings, with constant references to close things and activities that are taking place.

The word of the word

At 10 months, most children comprise between 5 and 10 words. ¡Only ¼ of them arrive at 40 words! From 12 to 18 months (more or less) it is called the word of a word (or Holofrassic). Each word constitutes a phrase by itself. At 12 months, most children can produce 3 or 4 words, and understand between 30 and 40. Again, ¡There are some children who understand and even use up to 80! At 14 months, the number of words between 50-100, and even the ¼ Slowly knows 20-50. At 18 months, most children can produce 25-50 words for themselves, and understand hundreds of them.

Two characteristics of this stage are the overextensions and the Infraextensions. For example, the word "hat" can mean almost anything that someone wears on their head any man. On the other hand, sometimes children use infraextension, in which they use a general word to apply it a specific thing. For example, "Bibi" can mean my bottle and only my bottle, and "paper" can mean my shoes and only those.

Children's first words

There are certain common words that are shown in most children's vocabularies. In English, they include breast, potato, baby, puppy, kitten, duckling, milk, cookie, juice, doll, car, ear, eye, nose, hello, goodbye, no, go, down, and above. There are also unique words, sometimes invented by children, called idolectos, Identical twins sometimes invent dozens of words among them that no other can understand.

Between 18 and 24 months (approximately), we see the beginning of phrases of two words, and Telegraphic speech. Here are some common examples, showing a variety of grammatical functions, created by the simple conjunction of two words:

• Look puppy, hello milk
• That ball, great ball
• Pope shoe (for example, potato shoe), baby shoe (P. eg. my shoe)
• More cookie, more song
• Two shoe, none juice (numbers and quantities)
• Mom Senta, Eva Lee ("phrases" of the subject-verb)
• Give me ball, I want more (make requests)
• No bed, not wet (denial)
• Mama Calcetín ("Phrases" of Subject-Object, P. eg. Mama takes my sock)
• Put book ("phrases" verb-object, p. eg. Put the book here)

The grammatical constructions

After 24 months, children begin to use grammatical constructions of various types: participles used such as verbs, prepositions, plurals, irregular past verbs, possessive,. Simple irregular are learned before regular.

The Grammatical genres They are not an easy to learn. The male and female words in French and the male, feminine and neutral words of the German are just a matter of memorization. The same difficulty applies to different kinds of verbs.

He aspect (such as differentiating between things that are done only once and things that are done repeatedly - the perfect and the imperfect) is learned before the time (past present Future). Verbal tense is really very difficult, although as adults we give it for granted.

There seems to be languages ​​that are easier for children to learn, and others that are more difficult: some languages ​​(Turkish, Hungarian and Finnish, for example) use many Suffixes To indicate a variety of grammatical and semantic qualities. These suffixes are very common syllables, and complete and totally regular, and they learn soon and easy.

On the other hand, some languages ​​(P. eg. The Chinese, the Indonesian and in a way the English) prefer to use small words called particles (p. eg. He, in, in, and, etc.), These tend to be learned later, because they have no meaning for themselves and are often without an accent and pronounced without clarity. Notice, for example, that "from" and "the" is usually gathered in "del".

A third group - which contains most European and semi -seitic languages ​​- has a Mixed system, including many irregular particles and ends without an accent. If you remember the efforts to remember the German articles, Spanish conjugations or the declines of Latin names, you will realize why children have a hard time learning these things too.

Up to what age do children learn to speak?

Language learning does not end at two years, of course. Three years of age are important for something called over-regularization. Most languages ​​have irregularities, but three -year -old children love rules and some of the irregularities they learned when they were smaller, P. eg. "I go" for "I Quepo". Three -year -old children can speak in four words phrases and can use 1000 words.

With four years, they are great questions, and they begin to use many words of the type of where, who, why, when (learned in that order). They can handle five words phrases, and can have a 1500 words vocabulary. Five -year -old children use six words phrases (with sentences, no less), and use at least 2000 words. Six -year -olds use up to 6000 words. And adults can use up to 25.000 words and recognize up to 50.0000.

Obstacles in Learning

One of the greatest obstacles to children is learn to read and write. In some languages, such as Italian or Turk, it is easy: words are written as they are pronounced, and pronounce. Other languages ​​- Swedish or French - are not too difficult, because there is much consistency. But other languages ​​have terribly outdated pronunciation systems. English is a clear winner among Western alphabet users. Years of education go by getting children to memorize irrational pronunciations. In Italy, on the other hand, pronunciation is not recognized as school subject, and spelling competitions would be ridiculous.

And finally There are languages ​​that do not use alphabets: The Chinese requires years of memorization of long symbols lists. The Japanese really has four systems that all children need to learn: a large number of Kanji symbols, adopted centuries ago of the Chinese; two different syllabaries (syllable -based alphabets); and the western alphabet. The Koreans, on the other hand, have their own alphabet with a perfect relationship between symbols and sounds.

This article is merely informative, in psychology-online we have no power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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