Learning by ear is easy.....well, not quite

Learning by ear is a phrase that people use to describe language learning. Originally people thought that it was easy for children to pick up and learn any language because their brains are wired to do so. More recent studies have found this to be true and not so true. It is true that babies are wired to pick up language. It is not necessarily true though those children learn language easily. From almost at the beginning of birth, children try to learn language. Babies first listen to what we have to say, and then they try to imitate us. When babies first imitate us, it comes out sounding like babble. Eventually the sounds start to some together to form words we recognize. It is not until about 1 year old that the baby starts to speak his/her first words. Babies differ in their language ability so some might speak before they are 1 and some might start to speak afterwards. At 3 years old, some children might speak clear sentences while other might be struggling to connect simple nouns and verbs. Studies have shown that children need to be able to connect words and objects. This means that it helps when caretakers say a word while moving an object so that the child can associate the object with that word. The movement helps the child remember.

You might wonder than why is it that children seemingly learn a language faster. This might have to do with the necessity for the child to learn the language. For babies, language is the way that they can clearly communicate. For adults, there is usually not that kind of extreme necessity because adults can use another language. Adults are also able to take care of themselves. Babies depend completely on others so it is in their favor to learn the caretaker’s language as fast as possible. Since the baby is completely dependent on his/her caretaker, the baby is usually immersed in the language. This immersion helps the baby learn the language. Babies are also usually more willing to try to speak a new language because they are not embarrassed to make mistakes unlike many adults.

One thing seems to hold true about learning a language early as children is that children tend to have better pronunciation of the language. It seems to be true that children are better at hearing different sounds of a language. If a child does not hear certain sounds of a language as a child, it becomes more difficult for that child to hear those sounds as an adult. This became apparent to me when I was using some Cantonese with my own kids. My husband does not speak any Cantonese. I was telling the kids that I wanted to go upstairs. My husband asked me why I was saying a word twice. I did not know what he meant so I said it again. He again thought I said a word twice. It turns out he thought the words in Cantonese of "want" and "up" were the same words. I kept saying it to him, but he could not hear the difference. This was amazing to me because the words sounded completely different to me. We realized that the difference in our listening is that Cantonese (Mandarin as well) has different tones. If the sound at the end of the word goes up, it completely changes the meaning of the word. Since I grew up listening to my parents speak, it was easy for me to understand the difference in the tones. Since my husband did not have a trained ear, he had a lot more difficulty. English words do not really change with tone so my husband's ear was not trained to listen for this as a child. This made it difficult for my husband to even hear the differences now as an adult. One can only assume that a person would need to be able to hear the sounds in order for him/her to be able to imitate the language properly and to sound native-like.

People are able to learn a language at any age, but it might be more difficult for the adult to hear some uncommon sounds and to sound native-like. Adults benefit though from having more of a focused learning meaning that someone can sit down and tell them about how nouns and verbs interact in a certain language. Babies/Children have to figure out how the nouns and verbs interact on their own through listening and practicing.

A good article I found about this subject was from an interview with a professor at Harvard. The professor's name is Catherine Snow. http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/features/snow10012002.html