This content was published by Andrew Tomazos and written by several hundred members of the former Internet Knowledge Base project.
Speech and life
One of the most interesting things about human speech is that we learn all the basic sounds of our first language before we speak them, in the first eighteen months of life. Babies aren't dumb: they're listening.
Any ear infections etc. at that age can affect literacy later on. However, this depends very much on how dynamic the language-learning experience is for that person. Rich learning bridges gaps.
What do you really remember best from school? The things you were told? The things you wrote down? Or the things you _did_?
As a very academic and joyless student, I was surprised to find that the things I remembered most vividly from school were excursions, drama productions, concerts, science experiments (including interesting accidents... ;) ) and craft activities: things I did.
I've applied this to teaching, and I've found that the more physical senses you involve in a learning activity, the more likely the participants are not only to remember the key points, but to understand them. Smells are some of the most evocative mnemonics in existence, sounds, especially music, key into our feelings and help us organize physical activity, taste is closely involved with motivation, hearing looks for cues and touch tells us where we are. Put them together, and half the time you'll remember something strongly even if you don't want to... ;)
So learning a language is not just about copying models. It's certainly not just about a communication code. It's about your own reality. I still remember when my very young son was learning to read, and refused to learn the word "house" because it didn't look like a house. The word "dog" had a tail and looked like a dog, and that made sense. The word house didn't. He suggested changing it. :) Even single words are part of each person's reality. I also remember when he first learnt the word "liquid", while still very young, and loved the way it felt in his mouth when he said it. He went around the house saying "liquid, liquid, liquid," lovingly for ages. Not that many of us may actually do these things, but each word, each combination of words is in fact a facet of our own experience. We learn more language as we live more. The more varied our life, the more opportunities we take, the more language we acquire.
How do we get a machine to do this? Will any language between human and machine always be a pretence of communication? Or can machines and humans find a compromise language which bridges the gap?
Right now, I think there is too much emphasis on anthropomorphizing machines. Do we want them to understand us? Fine, but we have to come half-way.
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