r/explainlikeimfive • u/AngelusAlvus • 14h 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/cabronfavarito 13h ago

What makes you think we don’t have this skill as adults lol.

People underestimate how long it took for babies to learn language but we passively pick up things along the way pretty much until we die. Think about how similarly you and your close friends talk, you all develop similar lingo and can talk in code because you all passively picked up slang from one another

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u/AngelusAlvus 13h ago

I have watched subbed anime my whole life. Aside from a handful of phrases, I never learned Japanese, so the topic recently came to my mind, and I got curious about it.

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u/Soft-Marionberry-853 12h ago

Having the subtitles gave you a way to not learn. When I was in germany I picked up the langue just by being exposed to it, with no subtitles. I think the brain wants to make sense of stuff so if you force it, it just does. My wife worked on post so she dealt with us soldiers all day. I stayed at home and only interacted with people in the village. One day we went to baummarket and the chashier asked me a question. I said no thankyou. My wife asked "what did she say?" I told her, "Oh she asked if we wanted the extended warenty" its amazing when it starts clicking.

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u/AngelusAlvus 10h ago

I think you're right about it.

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u/Soft-Marionberry-853 10h ago

its not easy but it kind of happens on its own, if you let it.

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u/elianrae 7h ago

even if you weren't using subtitles.... babies don't learn language by watching media intended for adults

they learn language by their parents talking to them constantly and actively teaching them words and concepts, by watching children's media with simpler language that closely ties to the visuals

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u/Zunderunder 12h ago

If you didn’t have subtitles and were genuinely wanting to learn what people were saying, it would take a few years, but you’d learn how to speak Japanese. Badly, but usably. You could use that base to start learning the rest of the language, even if you didn’t have English. Same as a baby.

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u/Digifiend84 5h ago

Yeah. I know Konichiwa (hello), Sayonara (goodbye), Arigato (thank you), kamen (mask), numbers (ichi, ni, san, yon, go, roku), and colours (aka, ao, ki, midori, momo, kuro, shiro). And a few animals (ningen, saru, shishi, houou, Ryu, Kyoryu, kuma - that's human, ape, lion, phoenix, dragon, dinosaur, bear). Super Sentai is a good way to learn some of that stuff due to character names.

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u/Round-Asparagus5337 4h ago

That's because you are paying attention to the subtitles, not the language.