Question: why is a baby born not knowing a particular language, if its parents are both british? for example, if 2 english people had a baby, they could teach the baby to speak french as its first language, instead of the baby being born being able to speak english?

Edward Codling answered on 22 Jun 2011:

Hi xploding – an interesting question!

Babies are born not knowing any language – although they may be more responsive to their parents voices as they will have heard them when in the womb. In the first few months and years of its life a baby is like a giant sponge for knowledge – learning everything about the world around it. One of the key things that the baby learns is how to communciate – to start with this is just crying. When it realises it gets attention when it cries it will do it more. Gradually it may also start to learn to smile or make gestures with its hands and feet. Then gradually it will start to make noises and then noises that sound like words. Then it is an ongoing process of improvement – trying out new words and letters until it can speak properly.

(I have experienced all of the above recently with my son who can now speak very well – he is 2 and a half!)

Children born into families where the parents speak more than one language regularly could very easily learn more than one language. In fact this is the best time to learn – as you get older your brain gets ‘hard-wired’ to dealing with language in a certain way. Hence it is harder for an adult to learn a language than a child – but it is easiest of all for a baby or toddler.

Some people think we should teach foreign languages at nursery or in the first years of primary school – do you think this would be a good idea?