How does a child learn language?! My 2 YO hardly says a word, but understand so much!
In: 5
If you’re curious enough to read a 500 page book, [The Language Instinct](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Language_Instinct) is a good overview.
Kids understand well before they’re able to speak. I’m finding that my 11-month-old can understand a wide variety of spoken commands and object names. With my older kid, I found that the big language explosion happens when their back teeth come in (around age 2). This is totally obvious in hindsight – you can’t make words when you lack all the phonemes that involve teeth – but something you probably wouldn’t think of in advance, and it was really striking how quickly language developed afterwards.
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