How do children acquire and pronounce language?

From a young age, children get by in life by communicating through screams to show all emotion, and crying too when portraying almost every emotion. Without words and language, we wouldn’t be where we are today as every culture relies on them, as they’re the most important thing a human will ever learn. In the documentary, a 15 month old child was bilingual learning both Greek and English. We found that it’s much easier for children to understand and learn 2 languages at once as it uses a different part of the brain to which adults do. When speaking the words, a human uses on average 30 muscles at once in order to produce the words which is why it’s so hard for children to learn how to talk. From a young age, the larynx (vocal trap in the throat) is extremely high up when they’re this young as it allows the child to breathe whilst suckling and only begins to drop when they get around the age of 1. This is when the pitch becomes higher and the chords are higher too. A disadvantage however of the larynx dropping (3cm lower) is that it means that the child is more vulnerable to choking.

When they get to the age of about 2, the pace in which the child learns new words becomes much quicker and the child in the documentary of age 2 and a half began to learn as much as 10 new words a day. At this age, she knows how to construct words into a sentence so that they begin to make sense, however they make virtuous errors in which they use their initiative  to add ‘s’ on the end of a pre-existing word to make it plural even if the newly formed word doesn’t make sense, this relates to the wug test also. At this age, children mostly get the grammar correct all the time, as ‘children have an instinctive map for language’. It’s also this age in which children begin to develop self- awareness in which they recognise themselves in a reflection in the mirror and they realise they are their own person, hence why they say about the terrible 2’s in which children have their worst tantrums as they realise they are their own person and they don’t understand the concept of sharing and want everything for themselves.