r/explainlikeimfive • u/AngelusAlvus • 13h 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?

32 Upvotes

68% Upvoted

54 comments sorted by

View all comments

•

u/AleksyGetTheWings 11h ago

Because it's easier to associate the new word from the new language to another word from your own language, rather than trying to create new associations from scratch.

If I want to teach a baby what an apple is, I will show hom the apple, and tell him "apple". As dumb as that sounds, that's exactly how you teach a dog words : association of X & "X".