How Babies Learn Languages

Patricia K. Kuhl, a Professor of Speech and Hearing Sciences, gives a TED Talk on how babies learn languages (includes a discussion of how Japanese and American babies learn to distinguish between “r” and “l” sounds):

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15 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - February 16, 2011 at 11:57 am

Categories: General Japan Tags:

http://tepido.org/ LB

Not news, really, this has been known for years: if you want a Japanese to be able to distinguish between English Rs and Ls you need to expose them at a very early age to a native English speaker. If you don’t do that, and wait until adulthood, while the difference can be learned it becomes much more difficult. Sure, there are individual differences in ability and all, but for consistent results you have to expose babies to the language.

The interesting thing to me is that most of the “deniers”, those who say “that’s BS, there is no difference in Japanese and American or British brains, Japanese can learn English Rs or Ls just like we native English speakers can, saying otherwise is Nihonjinron!”, are folks who actually live in Japan and are often supposed to be “English teachers”.

Oops.

Kevin not kevin

There was a lot more to this video than just ‘early is better’. They did a series of controlled studies to determine whether the language could be learned from just audio or just video. They also did a controlled study to see if a baby could pick up a language based on only brief exposure to something other than their native language.

I think a lot of this involves not just thinking, “duh,” but actually trying to get to the heart of human language development and pinpoint exact physical mechanisms being used to learn new things.

flowby

Kev – thanks for the more detailed analysis.

Very interesting stuff indeed.

Jeffrey

I think you mean that, of course, there is no difference between the human brain’s ability to learn anything. In other words, there is no Japanese brain, French brain, etc., making them uniquely suited to learning their “native” languages or any other learned cultural skill.

The results of this study are particularly unremarkable to anyone in a “mixed” marriage in which one parent’s native language is Japanese and one who speaks a different language, most commonly English. The children in these families grow up able to handle the phonics of both language without a second thought.

http://tepido.org/ LB

Yes, that is basically what I meant – a hypothetical caucasian baby who was raised from birth in Japan by Japanese-speaking parents or care-givers, with no exposure to English would have just as much trouble in his/her teens or adulthood trying to learn the difference between English Rs and Ls as a “native” Japanese. Brains are brains are brains – a Japanese person’s brain is not physically unique from a caucasian brain or any other brain. But an adult brain that has learned Japanese linguistic/cultural skills will have more difficulty learning non-Japanese skills (and vice-versa) than an infant brain, that is what this lecture showed.

Piglet

This is ovious.

stuart

wow this was really interesting!
I could see this now being played all around Japan in international schools and private English schools as a way to get more customers!
http://kushieda.wordpress.com Kushieda

Always loved the talks on TED, super interesting.
Though the quality of the microphone is picking up sounds that I don’t need to hear.
fish taco

I guess this explains why I can’t seem to master Japanese. On the other hand my toddler seems to be doing quite well learning 4 languages.

Jeffrey

On the contrary. With Japanese being limited to just 54 syllabic sounds, there is less to learn phonetically. And, if you are an English speaker, you are way ahead of the game because of the polyglot nature of the language. As with any language, the major hurdle is moving beyond text book utterances and internalizing slang and colloquialisms.

Lord Metroid

If you want to go polyglot, it is better to have a language without as many diphtongs which will really influence your accent as your mother language. Like the scandinavian languages, exception being danish of course.

specialkbar

I appreciate such informative articles like this. Not very frequent on this blog, but I enjoy the other stuff too! Its all fun stuff. .. I started learning Japanese at 25!
kay

i think its interesting that audio acquisition ability drops rapidly within 6 months during infancy. However just being able to distinguish sounds doesn’t ensure learning of a language. I think this is what happened to me lol. I had a lot of interaction with my Chinese grandparents as an infant and thus I believe now my intonation is better than if I tried to learn Chinese w/o prior exposure, but my actual language skills are pretty poor. Supposedly as an infant and toddler I could sing Chinese/Japanese songs which I now no longer know.
Dan

Interesting that TV exposure didn’t really help at all. Perhaps another nail in the coffin of the Baby Einstein-type videos if this holds for things beyond just language acquisition.
http://tf5@ab.auone-net.jp TofuUnion

In Japan it’s well known that the language distance between English and Japanese is wide. I’ve been reading English for 30 years in Japan since 12 yo. But I still feel difficulties in speaking and writing English, even I can fully comprehend the talks on TED.

Here, the critical learning period is the focused theme in terms of phonics, although there are lots of other factors in learning the foreign language. I understand French and German quite well and I would say the hardest hurdle is acquiring enough vocabularies.

How Babies Learn Languages

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