According to latest research, the best period for learning a foreign language is between birth and the age of 7, the ability declines significantly after puberty. Common knowledge you would say… most people must have observed how fast babies tend to pick up languages. True, most people know that, but what is it about babies that help them pick up a new language so quickly and efficiently? This is something that few people understand.
Those few people are scientists working towards deciphering this mystery and they may well have struck gold as it was recently revealed that these researchers have found that babies have a powerful ability to distinguish between various sounds. Now every language uses a unique set of sounds. Though initially babies are able to differentiate between all kinds of sounds, as they grow old this ability withers out. It becomes progressively weak as a baby’s native language starts getting dominant and by the time it has begun uttering its first words it already seems unable to differentiate between sounds that do not belong to the language it was taught predominantly.
The initial language learning process is quite like a new circuit being hardwired into the brain which guides the language learning abilities of a person throughout life. Amazingly, babies who are taught two languages at the same time seem to absorb both at equal speed and demonstrate a more efficient ability to absorb new languages in the future.
Scientists are now working upon the knowledge about how the ability to distinguish between different songs can enhance the ability to learn new languages. They are busy trying to come with methods with which adults could be taught new languages utilizing this principle.
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