Language Acquisition

The Linguistic Society of America
How do children acquire language? Do parents teach their children to talk?

No. Children acquire language quickly, easily, and without effort or formal teaching. It happens automatically, whether their parents try to teach them or not.

Although parents or other caretakers don't teach their children to speak, they do perform an important role
by talking to their children. Children who are never spoken to will not acquire language. And the language
must be used for interaction with the child; for example, a child who regularly hears language on the TV or
radio but nowhere else will not learn to talk.

Children acquire language through interaction — not only with their parents and other adults, but also with
other children. All normal children who grow up in normal households, surrounded by conversation, will
acquire the language that is being used around them.

And it is just as easy for a child to acquire two or more languages at the same time, as long as they are regularly interacting with speakers of those languages.


It's far easier for a child to acquire language as an infant and toddler than it will be for the same child to
learn, say, French in a college classroom 18 years later.

http://www.linguisticsociety.org/files/Language_Acquisition.pdf