Language Attainment Speaks of our Creator

While a few of us have the ability to learn several languages without much difficulty later in life, most have to work very hard to get a working knowledge of a new one. When in a different country, someone is saturated with the language, and people draw upon their existing associations to learn it. With young children, it is different.

Learning a language, and even multiple languages, is easier for young people. Their brains are still developing, and they are making connections to words with their senses.

Credit: Freeimages / dog madic

When I was holding our son who had been born just a few hours before, his mother spoke and he turned his head (already!) to look in her direction. Children know voices before they are born, and begin associating sounds with their visual input.

Those sounds they make are their way of learning how everything works. Another memory is that our very young daughter was vocalizing, but old enough to do some imitation. I said, "Baby babble." She managed in one try to get out, "Bay-bee ba-bull." Things were coming together.

While we connect words with meanings though visual and audio input, the way the brain is effectively divided into two halves makes it possible for those who are blind, deaf, or both to learn a language. People attain languages when they are in a context that is understood to some extent. Indeed, the existence of language itself speaks of the genius of our Creator.

How can a baby who can’t talk at all as a newborn end up asking questions like that by age three or four? Most of us can’t remember going through the toddler stage between one and two, but those who do may also recall how “adult talk” sounded—like a foreign language!

Do you remember the French you took? In reality, learning our first language was more demanding than any foreign language. What we had to do before we could produce our first meaningful word—much less string words together in more ways than there are atomic particles in the known universe—is nothing short of miraculous.

You can read the article in its entirety or hear the audio at "Language Acquisition: Making Sense of the World".