How Children Acquire Their Mother Tongue Essay

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Q. Describe how children acquire their mother tongue. (1200 words) “Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs.” ― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom Language is delineated as a set of spoken, written or signed words and the manner in which they are combined to communicate meaning. If we alter this definition to include complex grammar, language also becomes a quintessential human trait, authenticating the superiority of humans over other organisms. As Oliver Wendell Holmes states, “Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.” What is a nation without its national language? A native language or mother tongue is a language that a person has been exposed to from birth1. Metaphorically, it is the road map…show more content…
Globally, children acquire language and become proficient in them by passing through a series of phases. Phase – 1: Before Birth Various theories and ideas concerning the developmental psychology of a child have been conjectured, but scholars simultaneously agree that this extraordinary complex process begins in the womb itself. "The mother has first dibs on influencing the child's brain," researcher Patricia Kuhl, of the University of Washington, said in the statement. "The vowel sounds in her speech are the loudest units and the fetus locks onto them." Additional research continues to provide evidence that in the uterus a child is acclimatized to sounds of its native language, by getting used to rhythms and intonations of the language being spoken around them. It has also been confirmed that unborn babies’ heart rate will decrease at the sound of their mother’s voice. Phase – 2: Crying and
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