Development of the speech organs and hearing:
To be able to form sounds, a child must have functioning speech organs: lips, palate, tongue, jaw muscles, vocal cords and diaphragm must be present and functional. By crying, first sounds and gurgles, but also through feeding—sucking and swallowing—the child learns to control its speech organs and trains the necessary muscles. Hearing plays a special role in learning to speak. By listening, babies not only learn the sounds of their native language, they also internalize intonation and speech rhythm. Hearing-impaired children often have great difficulty learning to speak, even if their speech organs are perfectly developed.
Communication as the basis for language acquisition:
Language acquisition is a mixture of input and feedback. Through interaction with their parents, children receive the linguistic input they need. At the same time, it is the parents' task to listen attentively to their children and encourage them to communicate—this begins already when a baby utters its first "dududu" and is praised or receives a response from the parents. Vision plays an important role in this interaction. Children learn sounds and words not only by hearing, but also by observing their parents' mouth movements and trying to imitate them. Parents can promote this development by communicating a lot with their child from the very beginning, and also with each other, introducing songs and finger games, and refraining from simplified baby talk.
Up to the first word:
Overview of language development
In the womb, the fetus already trains its lips, tongue and palate, for example by sucking its thumb. Through the mother's voice it learns the typical sounds of its native language.
Newborns communicate by crying—this first form of contact with the environment strengthens the speech organs just as sucking and swallowing food do.
At one month babies can already vary their first sounds.
At two months begins to explore its voice and tries out various babbling and squeaking sounds.
By the sixth month vision and hearing develop – the baby begins to produce a greater variety of sounds and recognizes, for example, simple melodies.
From the sixth month, the baby starts to form first double syllables and to accompany its sounds with gestures. It recognizes individual words and reacts to them.
In the 10th–12th month the baby begins to combine certain sounds and to form first words. These words are often used broadly—for example "meow" for all animals or "car" for anything that has wheels.
By the 18th month a child knows 10–20 words that it can associate with specific people or objects, and tries to sing along to simple melodies.\r\nBy the end of the second year of life most children speak two- and three-word sentences and have a vocabulary of around 50 words, with which they can also express their own wishes and feelings.
Fun learning to speak: Rhymes and songs for language development
Lullabies, little rhymes or fingerplays are familiar to most parents from their own childhood – for centuries they have been used to entertain children. The idea of fostering development was long in the background. Rather, songs and rhymes are a way for parents to communicate with their child on a developmentally appropriate level. Today we know that the input that toddlers receive through simple songs and fingerplays plays an important role in language development plays: On the one hand, children expand their vocabulary through frequent repetition of the verses, and on the other hand, it is precisely the combination of gestures and language that trains cognitive skills. Last but not least, Singing and rhyming is simply fun – and enjoyment of language and playing with words and sounds is probably the most effective form of language support. You can read more about language support for children here.
Bilingual upbringing – What parents should pay attention to
Bilingual upbringing is a matter close to the heart:
The advantages of bilingual upbringing are obvious, especially in our increasingly globally oriented society and working world. However, often there is no sophisticated parenting concept behind children growing up bilingually, but rather an emotional attachment of the parents to their mother tongue. The parent with a foreign mother tongue wants to bring their language and culture closer to the child to preserve it within the family. Or the parents have immigrated from another country, so that the children speak the parents' native language at home and the language of the country they live in in everyday life.
How does bilingual upbringing work?
Even if children are raised bilingually more intuitively, parents should consider some things – otherwise the children risk not fully mastering either language. It is therefore important that a child speaks both mother tongues regularly and, if possible, with different people.
As a rule of thumb: A second native language can only be learned perfectly if at least a quarter of the linguistic input is in that language.
Basically, most children sooner or later develop a preference for one of the two first languages; however, the advantages of bilingualism are not lost as a result. You can find more on the topic of bilingual upbringing here.
Learning to speak should be fun
Of course, parents should carefully observe their child's development and respond when irregularities become apparent. But the most important thing for healthy language development remains communication in everyday life, far removed from the idea of targeted promotion: simply enjoying speaking and playing with language. Most children are very creative in dealing with language when they are encouraged to do so. Whether you imitate animal sounds or everyday objects together, invent small rhymes and stories, or 'rework' well-known children's songs – through experimenting, children develop a feel for the nuances of language and become increasingly confident in using it.
