Have you ever heard a foreign language and wondered how the heck those people were pronouncing those words and sounds? Watching documentaries on TV made me glad as a kid not to have grown up in some village where clicks of my tongue or some other (to me – impossible) sounds belong to every day communication.
My number one thought watching and hearing those documentaries was, “I could never make that sound even if i tried!” and “so glad I was born in Canada”.
There are over 2700 languages on this planet and in addition over 7000 dialects. On the Solomon Island, the language Rotokas has an alphabet with only 11 characters. On the other end Cambodia uses the Khmer script which has 35 consonant symbols and 24 vowels!
It is an amazing thing that we can all learn our languages without even trying. It is a natural part of infant development, and it is a fact that if you were born on some other continent with another language as your native tongue – you would have learned that language as easily as you did the one you have now.
Child psychology and development show how we all start off on the same foot with regards to the pre-linguistic phases of a child’s speach development.
A newborn baby starts off in a crying phase. The sounds they make are reflective of their physical state – reflex reactions to the feelings of hunger, pain, cold, etc. At this point, all a baby can do to communicate is scream. LOUDLY. But it is communication, all the same, as baby realizes very quickly that his cries force a reaction from the people around him. So he trains this voice of his and, while doing so, trains Mommy and Daddy to react QUICKLY.
Researchers believe that a 3 day old baby can already distinguish speech from other environmental noises and even more importantly – baby can recognize Mommy’s voice apart from strangers.
At around 6 -8 weeks, a baby starts to not only communicate when he is unhappy – suddenly rays of sunshine pop through the clouds because the baby starts to SMILE and coo, showing off his happiness and feelings of well-being.
This is also the beginning of the first Babbling Phase (or “1. Lallphase” – as the German’s call it. 🙂
Baby starts making noises and gets enjoyment and stimulation from the gurgling, cooing, and the moving around of his tongue in his mouth. Each new stimulation of the tactile sense motivates the baby to experiment more with sounds and breathing, giving the baby a wide variety of vocal noises.
The interesting part about this phase is: All babies coo and babble the same sounds. Doesn’t matter what country they are from, or what their native language is – baby babble is international. Even babies from countries who’s language does not include a rolling “R” or pronounce “L”, these consonants are babbled by all children alike in this first phase.
At around 6 months of age, the second Babble Phase (or “2. Lallphase”) begins. This differs from the first phase because now the infant is stimulated more from what he hears and less from the tactile sense. Trying to imitate sounds and speech in his environment is more the focus. From this point on, babys only babble and coo in their own native language sounds.
No wonder it is hard for us adults to pronounce certain foreign words and sounds when we stop experimenting with our vocal cords at such a young age.
Now I wonder: If we put a whole group of international babies in a room together and let them babble and coo at each other – would they understand each other? The international babble language. I think so. 🙂
For anyone who is interested in a milestone chart of speech development: Milestone Chart
References:
http://www.knetfeder.de/kkp/sprache.html
http://languagedevelopment.tripod.com/id16.html
Advanced Denglish 