how can babies/toddlers learn virtually any language on earth from easy ones such as spanish or english to hardcores like chinese or arab? Why is it so difficult when you are an adult?
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I taught EFL for 10 years and learned Korean as an adult.
The human brain develops throughout childhood, with the last stages of development being in the mid 20s. In the early stages, the brain’s native language capacities develop. Children learn almost everything through imitation, and language is no exception. As the brain’s power to receive and produce spoken and written language increases, children naturally absorb the langauge(s) spoken around them. They do not actually need to be taught grammar rules or phonics in order to use the langauge.
At some age that is different for everyone, this langauge-learning ability decreases. From that point on, your native language is processed in a different way than any other languages you learn. Other langauges have to be learned through memorization and practice, and you need the grammar rules and phonics in order to use the langauge. Other languages are also all part of the same cognitive process, separate from your native language. This is why, when learning two foreign languages, you may mix them up.
I can try to dig up sources if you want, but that is my understanding.
As an analogy, think of the brain as a notebook or binder. When the baby is growing, their brain is developing, too; they’re adding blank pages to their notebook/binder. Of course, it’s easy to fill a blank page with useful information. When you’re an adult, your brain (notebook/binder) is getting very full. You can’t add information to it easily, and rewriting old parts of it is a difficult task. So it’s harder for an adult to learn basic stuff that a baby can learn easily.
There’s a whole field of study around this but the short answer is we don’t really know but we have a few ideas. Linguists don’t kill me but here’s my best attempt at an oversimplified layman’s overview:
1. Babies in general are wired to pick up certain sensory inputs at certain ages. Anyone who’s had kids can attest to how their baby suddenly seemed to notice light / food / colours / textures / etc right at certain milestones. Their brains are probably set up to pick up linguistic input in stages too.
2. The evidence we do have shows that adult brains are wired to pick up linguistic input but mostly in the form of new vocabulary, not phonology (pronunciation) or syntax (grammar). That’s why your vocab suddenly gets more complex in adolescence and continues to develop throughout your life, but learning how to speak full sentences in a new language is hard.
3. Evidence also shows that adults who do learn new languages do it best through full immersion. That is — moving to a new country, consuming all your news, entertainment, social and work life, etc through that language. As needs must. If you think about it this is exactly what babies do. They don’t take a 2 hour English class every Tuesday evening. They are living in a 24 hour English class, and even then they don’t get super fluent until after about three years.
If you’re really interested in this subject you can deep-dive ad nauseam, but that’s my best summary 🙂
I was a certified ESL teacher and took training on language learning. I also became fluent in conversational Korean.
Children actual learn a native language over a long period of time, from birth until you graduate high school (at least) you are developing your speaking, listening, writing etc. Let’s call that 18 years. The early years are devoted to learning sounds, then words, then grammar, sentences etc. Along with this are concepts eg. Electricity, Sex, Religion where some words have very complex meanings. And children are doing all this in an immersion environment.
How quickly and well a child can learn a foreign language is related to their mastery of their native language ie. A six year old isn’t going to speak a second language better than their native language. Many young children who grow up learning two languages at once experience difficulty confusing the two in speech.
Adults can actually learn a second language *very* quickly. They already intuitvely understand words, sentences, grammar etc. They have all the complex meanings and just need to know the new word. What makes learning a new language seem hard is mostly lack the time and not living in the environment where you’re using it daily.
For US Foreign Service employees (diplomats) even the languages considered “Super hard languages” to learn eg. Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean take just 88 weeks, or 21 months to achieve Professional Working Proficiency. So under 2 years of intense study to live *and work* in a foreign language. I’d like to see any child accomplish that in under 2 years.
tl;dr Adults can actually master a language faster than children given the time and training.
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