This essay focuses on The universal human ability. Humans appear to come into this world ready to attend to the sounds that they hear communicate

The universal human ability

English-speaking babies of 6-8 months can reliably distinguish between two sounds from the Hindi language, but 10-12-month-old native English speakers cannot (Werker & Tees, 1984). Even 4-day-old infants already begin to show a preference for the rhythm of sounds from their own language over other languages (Mehler, Jusczyk, & Lambertz, 1988). Humans appear to come into this world ready to attend to the sounds that they hear communicated in language and to separate those from all the other noises they encounter. The universal human ability of being able to distinguish all possible phonemes gets whittled down. This is to the ability to perceive and categorize only the phonemes.

This heard during the critical window

of language development. This research suggests that we are biologically prepared to attend to human speech as soon as we come into this world. And this preference for speech (we are not especially attentive to many other kinds of sound as babies; Vouloumanos & Werker, 2004) predisposes us to start picking up languages at an early age. However, in the process of learning a language, our brains need to organize language sounds and other features in order to recognize them. Early in life (before puberty) our brains are especially pliable for organizing themselves in response to language input. Later on, however, our brains are not as flexible. As a result, humans are better at acquiring and mastering languages.

This early in life (both first and second

languages, although adults may initially outstrip. The children when they begin to learn a second language; Johnson & Newport, 1989), but this capacity declines with age, especially with respect to aspects such as accent and grammar (Lenneberg, 1967; Newport, 1991).  His younger brother, Walter, was 14 at the time. After decades of living in the United States, Henry’s English always preserved a thick German accent. Walter, on the other hand, speaks with no German accent whatsoever. When asked why his brother still spoke with an accent, Walter replied, “Because Henry doesn’t listen!” . It is much more difficult to master a language if you start learning it after the sensitive period has expired. Another source of evidence for this sensitive period in language acquisition comes from studies of bilingual individuals’ brains.