Dan Wuori@DanWuori
From 0 to 60 in X seconds…
For years that’s been one of the benchmarks used by auto manufacturers to describe the rapid acceleration of the world’s most powerful cars.
It’s also a perfect metaphor to wrap up two weeks of posts focused on the language acquisition of young children.
Babies enter the world with cries and gurgles… advance rapidly to complex forms of babbling, and generally speak their first words within a year.
Their vocabularies growing exponentially, they begin stringing simple sentences together shortly thereafter and by two years of age, become surprisingly powerful little communicators.
From 0 to 60 in just a little more than 24 months.
It’s really amazing to witness.
I began this series with video of a baby’s first sounds, captured in a hospital maternity ward. So what better way to conclude it than with an example of the end result?
I got such a kick out of listening to this little one, age two, discussing her exasperation over the family dog’s need to bark at… well, everything.
Check out not only her complex vocabulary and grammar, but her expression and tone… The way her personality is exposed through her vocalizations.
Listening to her it’s hard to imagine that roughly 18 months prior she’d not yet spoken a single conventional word.
Talk about acceleration! 🏎️
Of course this isn’t truly the end point for language development.
Her vocabulary will continue to grow throughout her lifetime, for example… but the foundations of her lifelong success have been laid… transforming not only her ability to communicate but the very ways she is able to think.
Language is arguably humankind’s most powerful tool. And it’s mastered rapidly by its most efficient and precocious little learners.
This fantastic video was shared to IG by harperraeels.
