Learning a new language, one of the most difficult tasks for an adult, comes naturally and easily to young children. Researchers have proven that in this aspect, young children are more skilled than adults, and that they have a unique potential in this field. The younger they are, the more languages they are able to master and they also manage to acquire all the finer points of grammer.
Glen Doman declares that every child is a linguistic genius, and we only appreciate the magnitude of the miracle when a child does not begin to speak. According to Glen, our children's intelligence develops according to the input we give them. The more you chat to a baby or infant, the more chance he will have to develop good rhetorical skills.
Until the age of eighteen months, Eli, Etty's second son, did not utter one clear word. Her first son, Avi, had started chattering almost from birth, thus, by comparison, his brother was lazy and very slow. At the age of one year, Avi had spoken fluently, had even told stories, and was held to be the `genius of the nursery.'
Etty had been very proud of him, but till Eli arrived, she hadn't appreciated the marvel. Eli's early motor development was more or less according to the books which Etty referred to scrupulously. It was only his verbal skills which were delayed.
Children of under twelve months in the neighborhood were already sounding out a few words, but he just pointed at objects which he wanted. Etty had the feeling that he actually understood words, but just didn't manage to say them. On the rare occasions when he tried to express himself, he confused the sounds so badly that she did not understand what he wanted.
Etty was concerned and consulted the top specialists. They all told her not to worry, that he seemed an alert child, and that sometimes children speak a little later. If he showed signs of comprehension, there was no need to worry. They were right. When he was eighteen months old, he began to talk, and since then, he has progressed at a slow but steady pace.
Most parents take their children's development of speech for granted. But actually, it is one of the most difficult intellectual feats. It is only when something goes wrong that we begin to appreciate this great miracle.
Each and every syllable or sound which an infant utters is a miracle in itself. Even speech specialists treat the phenomenon of speech with respect. Glen Doman, a linguist from Philadelphia, says, "The development of speech is one of the greatest achievements in scholarship." He asks, "How many adults do you know who have learned to speak a foreign language in such a comparatively short time? The number of adults who have completely mastered a foreign language without a trace of an accent is rare. The few who have, are objects of envy and universal admiration."
Doman reports that he has spent various periods of time in over one hundred countries, and in spite of his dream of mastering at least one foreign language, he admits that he couldn't even produce one grammatically correct sentence in any one of them. "I tried," he admits candidly. "And how I tried!"
An adult who wants to develop an inferiority complex, states Domany wryly, has only to compete with his eighteen month old son in learning a second language. He suggests an experiment where a highly intelligent thirty-year-old man with great scholastic aptitude is placed in a small village in Italy. He is to stay there for a year and a half, and his only assignment is to learn the language. At the same time, a child of one and a half years will be placed in the same village.
If this thirty-year-old man accepts the challenge, he will have to take a course of lessons in order to learn to speak correctly, while the child will naturally receive no official tutelage. At the end of one and a half years, both of them will be speaking the language well, with one small striking difference. The brilliant scholar will be speaking Italian with an appalling American accent while the child will be using the dialect and pronunciation of the locals.
Doman claims that this is not surprising. "Every child is a linguistic genius. Although this is a phenomenon which is beyond our understanding, we take the ability to learn a language (or ten) during the first three years of life for granted. This marvel is only conspicuous by its absence. When a small child fails to speak, we suddenly appreciate the wonder and complexity of speech. Parents of a child who isn't speaking will do all in their power to further his development. They will go to every center of speech, begging for help.
For a child born in Philadelphia, English is as much a `foreign' language as German or Italian. Nevertheless, by the age of one, he already understands a great deal, and is beginning to utter his own first words. By the age of two, he has already developed some speaking skills. By three, his mastery of the language is such that he can cope with most situations. By six, he will be speaking perfectly about anything in the environment.
If he is born into a bilingual family, this child will speak both languages effortlessly. If he is exposed to three languages or brought up in a home where they speak several languages, he will master all of them with amazing competence.
The Nine-Year-Old Spoke Nine Languages
Just over a year after a close friend of Doman's had been stationed in Japan after World War II, he heard some Japanese children chatting in the back yard. He looked out of the window and to his surprise, he noticed that one of the children was his own son. After three years in Japan, when they returned to the States, his and his wife's combined vocabulary consisted of eight words. These were pronounced so badly that only Americans understood them. Their Japanese friends did not.
Doman has further proof of children's linguistic abilities. Eli, his nine- year-old son who provokes feelings of overt jealousy in his father, speaks no less than nine languages fluently. He was born in Cairo, in an English speaking community, but grew up speaking both French and Arabic, besides English. He learned Spanish from his Spanish grandparents who lived with them. When the family moved to Haifa, the child learned to speak Yiddish, German and Hebrew. His Turkish grandparents who moved to Haifa with them, taught him Turkish, and when the family moved to Brazil, the child added Portuguese to his repertoire. What maddened Doman, as he says, was the fact that the child bothered to apolgize for his poor English, which he had learned mainly at school in an accent which would not shame a native-born Englishman.
How did this child manage to hold a fluent conversation in nine difficult languages after thirty months of exposure, with a perfect native accent? Doman claims that it is a true miracle.
The Doman child must be particularly gifted in languages. Opinions as to what constitutes mastery of a language also vary. Do children really speak several languages without `interference' or switching from one language to another? No doubt many readers will have firsthand experience of children in a multilingual home. There will be future articles on reseearch into acquisition of one or more languages and the maintenance of those languages.
