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How to learn a new language like a baby


Reading too early may slow adults’ language learning progress.

The subtitles were either in the original Māori spelling where speech sounds consistently map onto specific letters (similar to Spanish), altered to reduce sound-letter correspondence (like in English, for example “sight”, “site”, “cite”), or they were transliterated to a script unknown to any of the participants (Hebrew). Experts looking for ways to reawaken adults’ language-learning capabilities should therefore consider the potentially negative impact of premature exposure to alphabetic spelling in a foreign language. Listening without reading letters may help us to stop focusing on individual vowels, consonants and separate words, and instead absorb the overall flow of a language much like infants do.

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