Babies and Foreign Languages

Posted by
Diane Farrug
May 14, 2008

British linguistic psychologists at Bristol University have found that babies who hear foreign speech will find it easier to acquire a foreign language later in life. The first nine months of life are beneficial for language learning, as the brain is in a natural stage of "programming". By hearing foreign languages at this crucial stage, the brain will be able to recognize key sounds in the future.

Researchers measured the electrical activity in babies' brains in response to different speech sounds. What's really amazing is that there is no limit to the number of sounds those little infant brains can recognize. However, the "programming" window closes quickly. If babies hear nothing other than their native language by the age of six months, they will only be able to recognize vowel sounds from that language. By the age of nine or ten months, they will only recognize consonants from their native language.

Another American study also supports the benefits of exposing babies to multiple languages. At the University of Washington, researchers found that babies who heard one hour of Chinese each week had an easier time recognizing Chinese sounds when they were older.

So, go ahead and expose your baby to foreign languages, and lots of them. If you speak another language, use it to talk, sing, and read to your infant. Hire bilingual babysitters and invite multi-lingual friends to speak to your little ones in their native language. Play multi-lingual lullaby CD's as your babies drift off to sleep. Find recordings of nursery rhymes and songs from a variety of different languages.

Give your baby the gift of languages. Start young--very young.

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