How do Babies learn a language?

Experts say...

      Babies are smarter than you think! They can add before they can count. They can understand a hundred words before they can speak. And at three months, their powers of memory are far greater than we ever imagined.

 (Babies are smarter than you think - LIFE Magazine)

     The power to learn a language is so great in the young child... they can learn as many spoken languages as you can allow them to hear regularly!

(Dr. Susan Curtiss, Professor of Linguistics, UCLA)

      I think how babies learn language is common sense. All babies are born with an extraordinary ability to learn languages, pattern of sounds and associate them to the meaning attributed to them by their parents. As anyone who's heard a foreign language knows, the spaces between words are only obvious once you know the language. We do not "speak----like----this," but rather with a fluid stream of words. It seems to be a chicken-and-egg problem. You can't learn the language until you know the words. But you can't distinguish the words until you know the language.

     Distinguishing words is a necessary step to interpreting them, but it's not sufficient. As anybody who's learned a second language knows, words can be ambiguous. Clauses seem to play a crucial role from the start. Babies distinguish clauses by learning the melody of a language -- the rhythm of sounds and pauses, the varying pitch in the voice, the different pattern of loudness and softness. Only after an infant learns the basics of identifying words and learning clauses do words start to acquire meanings -- definitions. When the child begins talking at two words at a time, this is the first evidence that they understand something about grammar and language.

      Although English is extremely complicated -- at least for computers -- learning languages comes as naturally to infants "as barking to a dog".  This means most kids get enough stimulation to learn speech without any effort by the parents. Forget about advanced speaking classes for your two-year-old: "For the first three years, you can't go wrong, unless you lock them in a dark closet". Even the children of strong silent types learn to talk just fine.

     The only way to encourage development in babies is to spend time with them, talking to them and giving them time to respond too, even if it is through gestures or babbling. This method is known as ‘joint attention’ and no TV programs or videos can substitute it. It has been seen that children learn earlier with live speakers rather than recordings. Even, if parents are working, the time they spend with the babies in fun, warm and loving interaction in the evening is enough for the children to pick up words and language. If your child spends most of his or her time in a daycare, make sure that they have low caregiver-to-child ratio and that caregivers spend time talking and reading to children.

Source: http://www.whyfiles.org/058language/baby_talk.html