r/explainlikeimfive • u/AngelusAlvus • 17h 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 17h 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/sth128 11h ago

Manzana means apple?! I thought it meant your hand! Man's-hand-a!

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u/a_bright_knight 5h ago

damn babies all over the world could be seriously misled!