How does a child learn language?! My 2 YO hardly says a word, but understand so much!
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If you watch the docuseries Babies on Netflix there is a language/word episode. That goes more in depth.
There are a lot of steps. They have to figure out how to make the sounds my daughter is 9 months and sometimes she will copy the shape my mouth makes but isn’t sure how to make the sound that goes with it. Usually doesn’t take more than a few weeks before she figures it out.
They also need to learn what words are. Each sound you make might be a word or it could just be a syllable of a larger word. Two words that are usually used together may sound like one word with two syllables like “good job.”
Also they have to basically figure it all out themselves. If you learn a second language at least you already are able to use a lot of the sounds and you can ask how to say this/that.
The most interesting part to me is the language explosion that happens, most babies will have 1-3 words other than mama and dada by 1. They don’t have to be perfect like Ba for ball. By 18 months many have 20 words.
But sometime between about 18 months to 30 months or so baby’s will start saying hundred of words. Also they can parrot new words so easily. Techincally it doesn’t count as knowing the word if it’s copying but that parroting helps them.
It’s as though they need enough input and also masterery of making the sounds before language can really breakthrough. So you can help by talking to baby, reading to them, singing etc. If you don’t know what to say narratoring what you’re doing helps. Also awkward pauses for common phrases help. So ready-set……………….go. It needs to be pretty long too. Also another thing that helps is the +1 rule. So if baby says car when they see a car. You say fast car or red car that way you can add vocabulary.
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