FSFRebecca Posted January 18, 2017 Posted January 18, 2017 This was a such a fascinating piece on BBC news: Babies build knowledge about the language they hear even in the first few months of life, research shows. If you move countries and forget your birth language, you retain this hidden ability, according to a study. Dutch-speaking adults adopted from South Korea exceeded expectations at Korean pronunciation when retrained after losing their birth language. You can read the whole article here 3
Upsy Daisy Posted January 19, 2017 Posted January 19, 2017 I remember reading that they can distinguish subtle differences in the sounds of the languages they hear around them as babies that older people hearing it for the first time can't pick up.Babies are fascinating! 1
Rob6692 Posted January 22, 2017 Posted January 22, 2017 (edited) I remember reading that they can distinguish subtle differences in the sounds of the languages they hear around them as babies that older people hearing it for the first time can't pick up. yeah - they use rhythm, pitch, and melody to distinguish between the sounds they hear and are able to use this information to classify languages into broad classes as well as generally decipher the language. But they soon become enculturated by their native language and start to give more attention to the types of sounds that are more common in the language they're learning - this results in losing some of their earlier abilities, since they're no longer necessary Fascinating article by the way! Edited January 22, 2017 by Rob6692
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