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 food intake—by 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 mother tongue, 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 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 already begins when a baby utters its first “dududu” and is praised or receives an answer from the parents. Vision plays an important role in this interaction. Children learn sounds and words not only by hearing, but also by watching their parents' mouth movements and trying to imitate them. Parents can promote this development by communicating a lot with their child (and with each other) from the start, 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 becomes familiar with 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.
With one month can already vary their early sounds.
With two months a child begins to explore its voice and experiments with different babbling and squeaking sounds.
Until 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 begins to form first two-syllable sounds and to accompany its sounds with gestures. It recognizes individual words and responds to them.
In the 10th-12th month the baby begins to combine certain sounds and form first words. These words are often used broadly—for example “meow” for all animals or “car” for anything with wheels.
Until the 18th month a child masters 10-20 words that it can assign to specific people or objects, and tries to sing along to simple melodies. At the end of the second year of life most children speak two-word 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 to entertain children.important role in language development plays: On the one hand, children expand their vocabulary through the frequent repetition of verses, and on the other hand, it is precisely the combination of gestures and language that trains cognitive abilities. Last but not least, singing and rhyming simply fun – and enjoyment of language and of playing with words and sounds is probably the most effective form of language promotion. You can read more about supporting children's language development here.
Bilingual Upbringing – What Parents Should Consider
Raising children bilingually is a matter close to the heart:
The advantages of a bilingual upbringing are obvious, especially in our increasingly global society and world of work. 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 introduce the child to their own language and culture in order to preserve it within the family. Or the parents have migrated from another country, so that the children speak the parents' mother tongue at home and the language of the country of residence in everyday life.
How does bilingual upbringing work?
Even if children are raised bilingually more intuitively, parents should consider a few things – otherwise children risk not fully mastering either of the two languages. 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.
In principle, most children sooner or later develop a preference for one of the two first languages, but 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 closely observe their child's development and respond if irregularities emerge. However, the most important thing for healthy language development remains communication in everyday life, far from the idea of formal support, simply through the enjoyment of speaking and playing with language. Most children are very creative in their use of language when they are encouraged to do so. Whether you imitate the sounds of animals or everyday objects together, invent little rhymes and stories, or 'rework' well-known children's songs – through experimenting, children develop a sense for the subtleties of language and become increasingly confident in dealing with it.
