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Babies remember their birth language


FSFRebecca

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This was a such a fascinating piece on BBC news:

Babies build knowledge about the language they hear even in the first few months of life, research shows.
If you move countries and forget your birth language, you retain this hidden ability, according to a study.
Dutch-speaking adults adopted from South Korea exceeded expectations at Korean pronunciation when retrained after losing their birth language.
You can read the whole article here
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I remember reading that they can distinguish subtle differences in the sounds of the languages they hear around them as babies that older people hearing it for the first time can't pick up.

yeah - they use rhythm, pitch, and melody to distinguish between the sounds they hear and are able to use this information to classify languages into broad classes as well as generally decipher the language. But they soon become enculturated by their native language and start to give more attention to the types of sounds that are more common in the language they're learning - this results in losing some of their earlier abilities, since they're no longer necessary

 

Fascinating article by the way!

Edited by Rob6692
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