Language Development

Language development begins at a very early age. The first stage of language development are sounds- they are nothing like a real language at all. Infants begin cooing at around two months, with a repetition of vowels, such as "Aaaaaaa" or "Eeeee." They often make these sounds when they are happy, comfortable or fed. Every infant around the globe, whether in China or America, sounds the same when making this noise. Babbling is the next stage, which occurs around three or four months of age. Babbling is the repetition of vowel-consonant patterns, like "Ma-Ma" or "Pa-Pa." Parents sometimes think that these are a babies first words. At this point, it still does not matter where the baby is from, they all sound the exact same. The third stage is Socialized Babbling, occuring around 6-10 months. There are still no real words spoken yet, but the child is beginning to make sounds that sound more like real words. Children lose their ability to hear phonemes (sounds) they hear. Baby's first words finally happen around the child's first birthday, and the word is usually something that they have heard often, like "Bye-bye" or another social word. From this point, children begin to build on what they know- single word sentences turn into two word sentences, slowly beginning to make more and more sense. Children's vocabulary increases at an incredible rate: from 0 words at 1 year, to 50 words at 16 months, to 600 words at 2 1/2 years old! At age 5 or 6, children know as many as 150,000 words!! Children learn the most from what they hear: if their mother uses improper grammar, chances are the child will have a very hard time breaking that habit because that is the way they learned to speak and what they have been exposed to the most. Just like I have said before, children are like sponges and soak up everything that they hear, so everyone needs to be careful what is said around a child to give that child the best opportunity as possible to grow up as a smart and respected human being.