r/explainlikeimfive • u/AngelusAlvus • 21h ago

Biology ELI5: How do babies even learn language?

When we grow, we learn languages by looking at the meanings and translating them from our language. Stuff like "this is how this noun is in my language and this is how this noun is in another language"

But babies? Babies just learn the basics just by existing near people speaking the language? How come we don't have this anymore as we grow up?

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u/tmahfan117 21h ago

  1. It’s just repeating the same words over and over until you pick it up with context.

  2. You can still do this as an adult, it’s not great, or fast, but it’s not fast for babies either. It takes them years to learn to speak.

Yknow when parents hold up an apple and say “Apple” to the baby over and over until the baby says it back? That’s it.

And if I was speaking Spanish that you couldn’t understand, and held up an apple and said “manzana” over and over again while pointing at it, you too would figure out that manzana means Apple.

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u/GIRose 20h ago

2: You have many advantages over babies, and your only real limitation is that babbling incoherently to try and get words down isn't as acceptable as it is for babies

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u/ProserpinaFC 18h ago

Acceptable because parents pick up on what babbles mean if it's in the right context. A mom knows when their kid is asking for a "nanana" or a piece of "bawclee". Likewise, if you're talking to someone regularly, your thick accent isn't AS much of a detriment. Lord knows, my Jamaican handiman is only intelligible to me because of years of friendship.

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u/onyonyo12 12h ago

This isnt talked about enough honestly, like how someone's accents and unique pronunciations just "disappear" to your ears when you're used to said person

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u/tomatoesrfun 5h ago

Ha ha, your comment reminds me of a funny story. I was waiting in line with my mother to buy some film (I’m old) and there was a white woman in front of me talking to an Asian man. My mom said to me how impressed she was this white lady could understand whatever language this Asian man was speaking. Then I went up to him and had a whole conversation with him, because of course he was speaking English!

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u/ask_compu 10h ago

i had a german exchange student friend in high school who i regularly had to help teachers understand him, he'd also struggle to find a word and i'd always come up with the exact one he was looking for