"Researchers at Northwestern University have found that even before your little one begins to speak, words play an important role in your child's comprehension and communication. "
http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2010/03/25/experts-talking-to-your-baby-can-build-language-skills/?iref=allsearch/
Out of uncertainty and desire to be a successful parent, grow studies such as this. It may seem commonsensical that parents must actually speak to their children in order for them to learn language yet, on a global level, the how surrounding first language acquisition are still not exactly common knowledge.
Before my daughter was born, I decided that she will be talked to as a, thinking and feeling, human being from her first breath on. I watched as my friends used coded words and phrases to explain the world to their children and I was less than impressed with the results they were getting. If a child's first language is learned by the sounds he hears in social settings than shouldn't those sounds form real words?
This study, however simple, shows that infants learn the phonemes that give meaning to the objects in their world. Infants are capable of hearing all of the sounds in al of the world’s languages, but will absorb and use those that are most commonly heard in social interactions around him. How often would an infant hear a “beep” synchronized with an object present in his everyday life? It is much more likely that the child will hear his parents use the same combination of sounds, or morphemes, and eventually will make connections with objects most commonly present when those sounds are heard.
Did we really need a study to tell us this? “Kids don’t come with handbooks”, as my grandparents always said, there is no right or wrong way until future generations discover that there just may be a right way. If there’s one thing we can take from this study it is that no matter if the word is real or fabricated, the sounds will come together to form meaning in the child’s world.
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