At what age does a child's perception of language stop him from discriminating between sounds?

Question

There are sounds in other languages that are hard to discriminate from other sounds. At what age does a child's first language acquisition stop him from making the distinction. Ex. Many Japanese people have a hard time distinguishing between the r and l sounds.

Answer 1

This happens very early, around 4 years old. That's why both languages should be spoken from birth to the child. Speech organs also lose the ability to form certain sounds by the teen years, such as the rolled "r" or the French "u" sound.

Answer 2

People can distinguish the peculiarity of the myriad phonemes in other languages, what causes dyslalia, is the reproduction of sounds that are not native to their own language. eg... the 'th' sound is foreign to natives of the Spanish language, therefor it is mechanically hard to reproduce phonetically.

Once a child acquires about a 500 word practical vocabulary the distinction in the different sounds becomes evident. Notwithstanding the latter statement, a child can learn up to 20 languages simultaneously with certain phonetic accuracy!

There are many phonemes that are very difficult to dominate in foreign languages but constant practice can make you a near natural speaker of the target language.

Answer 3

I believe that its any child under 5 years of age has the ability to make sounds that are in any language. I know that in my home we speak English and French and our daughter is 2 and can do both smoothly without a heavy American accent. Another thing is that my husband learned French as a child and he speaks it with out the American accent but I learned it later in life and when I speak French people always know that I am a native English speaker, I hope that helps some.

Answer 4

I would think we are all different and it would depend on the genes and how much the parents talked to the child

Answer 5

I don't think they have a problem hearing it, it's the pronunciation that throws them off.