When Do We Start Learning Language?

We start learning language at birth. Infants pay attention to their parent voices instead of random noises or other languages. We don’t fully understand most of language until the age of ten.

Children learn language out of necessity, it is frustrating for them to try and talk to people without people being able to understand them.  When adults try and learn another language they have very little motivation and find study the language for even the smallest of time tedious. But children have the motivation and time to learn language, they want to be understood and so they spend a lot of time learning language.

Although there are kids all over the world who have trouble speaking in their native language because they can’t pronounce certain sounds or have a disability preventing them. For example my brother has Dyspraxia which prevents him from being able to pronounce certain sounds properly, having subpar motor and co-ordination skills and has some mild behavioural issues along with it because of the frustrations he has when people can’t understand him. He didn’t start speaking clearly (people outside of my family could understand) until he was in prep which was only 3 years ago. He had to have speech therapy from the age of four and still has to have the occasional speech therapy at his school.  If someone hasn’t seen my brother in a long time they will always remark about how much easier it is to understand him and how well he can speak. He still does have times when people find it hard to understand him; this is mostly when he is tired and his brain doesn’t want to put the effort into speaking properly. As well as seeing a speech therapist he also saw (and still, like speech therapy, does occasionally see) an occupational therapist which helps him with his motor skills.

We as humans, start learning language from birth but it takes (for most people) until the age of 10-18 months to say their first word and by around the age 3 we can talk in complete sentences, but people with speech impediments like my brother it can take much longer.