• Question: When toddlers say things to you that you don't understand but they think makes perfect sense, does it technically make perfect sense? Do they have their own individual language to us that they then forget when we teach them English etc?

    Asked by smint to Tim, Tom on 6 Jul 2012.
    • Photo: Tom Lister

      Tom Lister answered on 6 Jul 2012:

      My youngest is 1 and not really using any words yet, but his ability to mimic tone and emphasis is outstanding – he does a perfect cockerel impression that also sounds like the word cockerel!

      So, I think that young children know what they are trying to communicate, but they are not able to create words in the same way that they can when they are older – this is partly because they have not learned to hear the subtle differences between sounds (for instance, I can’t tell the difference between some French words even though I am told they are different), and also because they are not able to make the sounds they want to yet.

      Get two toddlers together and they probably wont understand each others language, although they will probably understand what the other is trying to communicate as much as you or I can.

    • Photo: Tim Stephens

      Tim Stephens answered on 6 Jul 2012:

      Good answer Tom!
      I thought that to begin with toddlers mimic sounds that they hear, and then learn the words. I’ve not got any experience of this yet because I don’t have any children, but I did see a talk on ted.com (http://www.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word.html) that a researcher in this field gave. It’s pretty neat.

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