Children will come up with the most extraordinary things when they start using language. Cute things, hilarious things and, sometimes, baffling things that may start us wondering whether we should worry about their language development. This article summarizes some of the knowledge we have about typical child language acquisition, that is, what you, as a caregiver, need not worry about. The last sections give a few pointers about when to seek professional help concerning your child's language development and about resources on language acquisition. These resources (and this FAQ) deal with monolingual language acquisition.
How do children develop?
Like the rest of us, children are individuals. What makes them different from adults, as a whole, is that children are reared in adult worlds according to adult expectations. Children learn to model their behaviour on what goes on around them, be it dress codes, body language, table manners or language uses, usually first through their caregivers and later through peers in their family, neighbourhood or school. That is, children are learning how to function adequately in their environment, and much of this learning takes place through language itself. We talk to children to tell them about our adult world and they learn about the world from what we tell them. But they also learn about our language, from how we use it to tell them about other things. This means that language learning is going on whenever language is used around.
Children do not simply reproduce as-is whatever they are exposed to, for two reasons: First, they are developing physically. Just as it may take years to be able to develop the fine motor skills needed for sewing on a button, it will take years to be able to use speech organs in equally precise ways. Second, children are developing cognitively. They need to find ways to make sense of their environment, so that they can engage comfortably with it. They do this by progressively adapting the input they receive to their own emerging cognitive and linguistic abilities, and by screening out, as it were, what is as yet too complex for them to understand. Let's see why this difference between physical and cognitive ability matters for child language acquisition.
Are speech and language the same?
Speech and language are two quite different things. Speech is a physical ability, whereas language is an intellectual one. The difference between children's language abilities and speech abilities becomes clear from a classic illustration, reported by researchers Jean Berko-Gleason and Roger Brown in 1960. One parent imitates the child's developing pronunciation of the word fish as 'fis' and asks the child: Is this your 'fis'? To which the child responds: No! It's my 'fis'!
The child recognizes that the pronunciation 'fis' is not up to par, but cannot reproduce the adult target 'fish'. That is, the language item fish, complete with target pronunciation, is clear to the child, but speech production doesn't match this awareness. Children of deaf parents give us further proof of the difference between these two abilities: if these children are exposed to a sign language early in life, they will develop that language whether they are deaf or hearing, even though they might not use it. The 'fis-phenomenon' is what explains why children can get very angry at someone who repeats their own baby productions back to them, whether in pronunciation or in grammar.
Since speech and language are independent abilities, emerging language does not reflect emerging speech in any straightforward way, or vice versa. There's nothing necessarily wrong with someone's language abilities if they stutter, lisp or slur their words together, but these features of their speech may need correcting if they impair intelligibility beyond childhood. And there's nothing necessarily wrong with someone's speech if they can't say She sells seashells on the seashore by age 6, although their language ability may need checking if they don't understand what this sentence means, in any language, at the same age.
What speech and language development have in common is that they progress through stages and that their progress takes time. In speech, it is quite normal for English-speaking children, for example, to have difficulties pronouncing the sounds at the beginning of words like thank and than throughout their first 8 to 10 years: the precise coordination of the many different muscles involved in pronouncing any speech sound needs a lot of practice. In language, it is also normal that children have serious trouble throughout many years, for example sorting out the use of pronouns like I vs. you (if people say I of themselves and you to everyone else, what can these words mean??) or following complex instructions (which involve several clauses in one same sentence): children well into their early school years may not have acquired the meaning of words like or, before, after, or the cognitive ability to process complex sentences yet. As with the 'fis-phenomenon', in many cases these (typically temporary) child production problems are recognized as such by the child, who can simultaneously understand an adult using the correctly pronounced words in complete utterances. The child chooses to use other forms of expression, or to omit certain forms, so as to avoid using what they know will be badly produced.
Language acquisition takes time, a long time, because all learning needs time to digest and make ours what we experience around us; it cannot be rushed. Many caregivers want to see 'results', and in double-time, according to adult expectations, and then worry that 'nothing is happening'. Give yourself some time too: children learn language through natural interaction with caring people in everyday settings. The rule here is 'the more, the better': interact with your children in as many different, engaging, fun situations as possible, so that they realize that language permeates all that we do in all sorts of different ways. Give your children also plenty of time to 'do nothing': let them play around doing nothing in particular, wonder on their own about intriguing things like what the moon eats or why dogs don't wear clothes, or throw serious tantrums to learn how to cope with other people and themselves, and do all this by means of language. It is important to keep in mind that, as the child learns and acquires more and more language, each step in the process becomes less and less visible, to adults as well as to the child. The same is true of adult language learning: it may sometimes seem, to adult learners, that they are progressing very slowly or not at all; at some point they may suddenly realize that they have indeed made progress.
Language acquisition is not a competitive sport either. Children are not aiming to reach or surpass some level of language or some time frame that someone else set for them. They are competing only with themselves, on their own terms. The child whose speech is most advanced at the age of 2 is not necessarily going to be a higher achiever at age 20 than the child who was slower to learn language. Language is only part of what children have to learn and a child who seems slower might be learning in a different way, or concentrating on other things.
Children won't learn anything which they are not ready for -- they may parrot things that you or someone else tries to 'teach' them, but a parrot only learns to parrot. What your child is ready for is not found in books or in someone else's children. It's found in your child, and to learn about your child you must also give yourself -- and your child -- time. Your children are as new to you as everything they are learning about is to them.
Are speech and language the same?
Speech and language are two quite different things. Speech is a physical ability, whereas language is an intellectual one. The difference between children's language abilities and speech abilities becomes clear from a classic illustration, reported by researchers Jean Berko-Gleason and Roger Brown in 1960. One parent imitates the child's developing pronunciation of the word fish as 'fis' and asks the child: Is this your 'fis'? To which the child responds: No! It's my 'fis'!
The child recognizes that the pronunciation 'fis' is not up to par, but cannot reproduce the adult target 'fish'. That is, the language item fish, complete with target pronunciation, is clear to the child, but speech production doesn't match this awareness. Children of deaf parents give us further proof of the difference between these two abilities: if these children are exposed to a sign language early in life, they will develop that language whether they are deaf or hearing, even though they might not use it. The 'fis-phenomenon' is what explains why children can get very angry at someone who repeats their own baby productions back to them, whether in pronunciation or in grammar.
Since speech and language are independent abilities, emerging language does not reflect emerging speech in any straightforward way, or vice versa. There's nothing necessarily wrong with someone's language abilities if they stutter, lisp or slur their words together, but these features of their speech may need correcting if they impair intelligibility beyond childhood. And there's nothing necessarily wrong with someone's speech if they can't say She sells seashells on the seashore by age 6, although their language ability may need checking if they don't understand what this sentence means, in any language, at the same age.
What speech and language development have in common is that they progress through stages and that their progress takes time. In speech, it is quite normal for English-speaking children, for example, to have difficulties pronouncing the sounds at the beginning of words like thank and than throughout their first 8 to 10 years: the precise coordination of the many different muscles involved in pronouncing any speech sound needs a lot of practice. In language, it is also normal that children have serious trouble throughout many years, for example sorting out the use of pronouns like I vs. you (if people say I of themselves and you to everyone else, what can these words mean??) or following complex instructions (which involve several clauses in one same sentence): children well into their early school years may not have acquired the meaning of words like or, before, after, or the cognitive ability to process complex sentences yet. As with the 'fis-phenomenon', in many cases these (typically temporary) child production problems are recognized as such by the child, who can simultaneously understand an adult using the correctly pronounced words in complete utterances. The child chooses to use other forms of expression, or to omit certain forms, so as to avoid using what they know will be badly produced.
How long does it take to acquire language?
Language acquisition takes time, a long time, because all learning needs time to digest and make ours what we experience around us; it cannot be rushed. Many caregivers want to see 'results', and in double-time, according to adult expectations, and then worry that 'nothing is happening'. Give yourself some time too: children learn language through natural interaction with caring people in everyday settings. The rule here is 'the more, the better': interact with your children in as many different, engaging, fun situations as possible, so that they realize that language permeates all that we do in all sorts of different ways. Give your children also plenty of time to 'do nothing': let them play around doing nothing in particular, wonder on their own about intriguing things like what the moon eats or why dogs don't wear clothes, or throw serious tantrums to learn how to cope with other people and themselves, and do all this by means of language. It is important to keep in mind that, as the child learns and acquires more and more language, each step in the process becomes less and less visible, to adults as well as to the child. The same is true of adult language learning: it may sometimes seem, to adult learners, that they are progressing very slowly or not at all; at some point they may suddenly realize that they have indeed made progress.
Language acquisition is not a competitive sport either. Children are not aiming to reach or surpass some level of language or some time frame that someone else set for them. They are competing only with themselves, on their own terms. The child whose speech is most advanced at the age of 2 is not necessarily going to be a higher achiever at age 20 than the child who was slower to learn language. Language is only part of what children have to learn and a child who seems slower might be learning in a different way, or concentrating on other things.
Children won't learn anything which they are not ready for -- they may parrot things that you or someone else tries to 'teach' them, but a parrot only learns to parrot. What your child is ready for is not found in books or in someone else's children. It's found in your child, and to learn about your child you must also give yourself -- and your child -- time. Your children are as new to you as everything they are learning about is to them.
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