Children who hear foreign languages ​​early will learn languages ​​faster

British researchers have found that babies who hear foreign languages ​​in the first 9 months of their life will be more receptive to foreign languages ​​when they study or mature.

The psychological team at Bristol University says the human brain undergoes a period of programming in the newborn age, which establishes the ability to recognize key sounds in its native language.

This process helps the brain understand speech by filtering sounds that are not in the native language, but gradually it also makes it more difficult to identify strange sounds in a foreign language. Meanwhile, babies who are exposed to multiple languages ​​in the first months of life will maintain the ability to recognize sounds from every language in which they are heard.

" When a baby is born, it is capable of distinguishing all kinds of speech sounds. Even if its parents speak English, it still has the ability to distinguish Chinese and Greek vowels. Upon arrival. At 6 months of age, children can only recognize vowels of their mother tongue, and they will only discern the consonant after 2-3 months, so in the first 9-10 months, the child's language ability will limited to mother tongue, "said Nina Kazanina, a language psychologist in Bristol.

Kazanina explained that this happens because the brain is trying to understand speech sounds in the native language, so it makes a filtering mechanism that makes it easier to understand words.

"Although this is useful in learning a mother tongue, it limits the learning of foreign languages. Strange sounds are eliminated by filtering mechanisms and lead to misunderstandings," Kazanina said. .

She believes that explains why English speakers find it harder to learn French than those who speak Italian or Spanish, because French sounds more like Italian or Spanish.