I know our brains are trained in a certain way from childhood, but could someone elaborate? It seems physically impossible yet it is very much possible
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There’s a window for development of the language centers of our brain that closes in early adolescence. During that window, kids are sponges to soak up new words, sounds, etc. After that window closes, we can learn languages in an intellectual way, but learning new or different sounds will be difficult, where children do it unconsciously. My daughter went to Spanish immersion pre-school and was near fluent in Spanish without cracking a book, and her pronunciation was better than I could do with lots of effort.
To my knowledge, this is a late addition to the human brain in evolutionary terms, and the language window is unique among skills. For example, if you want to be a great tennis player, it’s good to start early, but there’s no similar time frame where if you haven’t learned how to hit a backspin drop shot by 14 you’re never going to learn.
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