Language: how children acquire language - learn - society - planet knowledge

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and the A child has already learned speech rhythm (prosody) before birth.

The child communicates with its environment

In the first weeks of life, babies cry mainly to communicate with their environment. As a rule, with success: Parents can hardly stand when the offspring roars. Hunger, pain, attention – the baby can point this out to his parents by crying. It’s the first basics of communication. The infant also trains the vocal tract.

From around the sixth week, the baby begins to produce other sounds: it coo, yelp and gurgle. These are spontaneous sounds that the child cannot control at this age. They sound like first attempts to speak, but they are only involuntary expressions of joy and well-being.

When the child is young, parents and other people help them learn the language without being aware of it. Talk to that small, they often use baby talk, also called baby talk. They emphasize individual words, speak more slowly and with more breaks.

The sentences are short and simple. This makes it easier for the child to recognize the structures of the language. If the children’s language becomes more complex, the adults adapt to the child.

The child can communicate his thoughts in this way, even if he does not yet know all of the words. Children often string several words together. So "Papa, Saft" can mean "Papa, I want juice!" or "Papa, you should drink juice too!"

Children are very creative at this stage. It is often difficult for parents to guess what their children are about to say, especially if an expression has different meanings.

she with about a year and a half to also use verbs, adjectives and prepositions. In this phase, they learn up to 40 new words a week.

The utterances are now similar to correct sentences, but are still predominantly formulated in the telegram style. Verbs are not yet matched (conjugated) to the subject of the sentence. For example, children say "Mom sleep" instead of "mom is sleeping".

But the children also master this hurdle. At around two and a half to three years old, they can usually utter short sentences without errors. Learning new words and producing them yourself is hardly a problem anymore.

But it is still difficult for them to understand the structures of the grammar and to apply them correctly. How they try to figure out the rules for themselves is often quite amusing for adults.

The devil is in the details

Many children find it difficult to get a verb into its past tense. Many verbs end in German "-th", such as "heard", "said" or "laughing". Other verbs are irregular and have forms that need to be learned, for example "ate", "drank" and "sang".

Children try to recognize the structures of the grammar and to derive general rules. You say about "gehte" instead went, "schlafte" instead of sleeping and "called" instead of shouting – even if they have already used the correct form.

It is often of little use here to improve the children. Once they have internalized the rules, they can form all past tenses – both the regular and the irregular.

By the time children have mastered all the subtleties of a language and have also understood and can apply complex rules such as the passive, they will be around eleven years old. You now have everything that distinguishes a native speaker. The vocabulary develops steadily in the course of her life – and becomes more and more extensive.

Language: how children acquire language – learn – society – planet knowledge

New section

The child communicates with its environment

The devil is in the details

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