Babies build knowledge about the language they hear even in the first few months of life, research shows. If you move countries and forget your birth language, you retain this hidden ability….
Dutch-speaking adults adopted from South Korea exceeded expectations at Korean pronunciation when retrained after losing their birth language.
Scientists say parents should talk to babies as much as possible in early life.
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The study is the first to show that the early experience of adopted children in their birth language gives them an advantage decades later even if they think it is forgotten….
”This finding indicates that useful language knowledge is laid down in [the] very early months of life, which can be retained without further input of the language and revealed via re-learning,” said [Dr Jiyoun Choi of Hanyang University in Seoul].
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It has long been known that the foundations for speaking and listening to a native language are laid down very early in life.
But it was not known until now that very early language acquisition is an abstract process.
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