Question:
How does a baby learn language, when learning requires concentration and
focus, and a baby is too little to do either?
They always say, you missed what was being discussed if you didn't
concentrate, but a baby is too little to concentrate yet picks up detail
after detail and learns to talk gramatically.
I understood the ability to focus narrowly only develops when a child is
older, so how do they all learn to talk by age 3 or so?
Perhaps something is wrong with our understanding of concentration,
learning, focus , retention, etc.
Answer:
It doesn't.
I listen to Portuguese radio (music + interspersed comments,
interviews and commercials) almost all day, without concentrating,
because I am doing something else or even working. Yet, some phrases,
especially from commercials, clearly because they are repeated to
often, stick in my brain, I sometimes suddenly think of them, while
waking up for example (with the radio off, that is, or to a Dutch
station, because PT radio is only accessible via internet).
That way I learn about native ways to express things, about word
order, about conjugations that "sound natural". I suppose this is
exactly how children learn.
Because they learn to focus, their language learning ability drops.
Yes. You learn a language by repetion (listinging and speaking), not
by cncentration.
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