How a child’s native language determines phonetic ability
Phonetic ability connected to a child’s first language
If you spoke Polish as a child your phonetic language ability is amazing, when it comes to pronouncing other languages because of the richness of the Polish language. However, you might have trouble with ‘A’ or ‘O’ or even more the sound “th” because it is not really present in the Polish language.
What happens when you learn a language as a baby is your brain will ignore sounds that are not present in native language. You will not practice certain motor skill movements with your tongue and the cells that once held this potential in your brain will be pruned away.
This is why Japanese children can not say the English ‘R’ sound o the English “I” sound for that matter.
Phonetic differentiation is fully in play by 18 months and children can differentiate and contrast sounds more clearly only if it is present in their own language.
A new study at the University of British Columbia by Christiane Dietrich of the Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics, Janet F. Werker and Daniel Swingley confirms this and reiterates what we all already suspected. That the first 18 months of linguistic development might be the most important when it comes to pronunciation, phonetic ability and the ability to differentiate sounds.
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November 21, 2007at 12:22 pm
Thanks for the great post on languages and phonetics. It was very useful.