How Babies Learn to Talk by Looking at What Their Parents Say to Them
Prolific linguist Rob Watts of RobWords explained how babies learn to talk by looking at why their parents say to them. He notes how words that start with Buh (as in balloon), Muh (as in mama), or Dah (as in daddy) are very easy for a baby to discern because each of these sounds are made at the front of the mouth.
He also talked about how the word for mother is so similar in so many languages. Examples include English (mama, mommy), Spanish/Italian (madre), French (mére), Hebrew (ima), Korean (eomeoni) and Arabic (al’umu), Chinese (mu qin), which explains why this theory is universal.
A baby is born capable of learning any language on the planet, no matter how complex or baffling that language might seem to us as adults. Infants can tell the different sounds between almost all, almost all sounds in any languages, in any human language in the world.
