First Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning

Do you wonder why I use the word "acquisition" with the first language and the word "learning" with a second language? Well, it's simple, actually. See, babies and children learn their first language(s) without effort. They seem to absorb the vocabulary, grammer rules, pronunciation and sentence structures like a sponge. They can even distinguish between several languages if the speakers and/or the situations are clearly separated. That way, babies can learn more than one first language. They become bilingual or even multilingual. I have heard of children who grew up with four different languages and ended up understanding and speaking all four of them like a native language.

First language acquisition is passive.

When children start a new language at the age of three or older, on the other hand, their natural ability to absorb the new language without effort is already gone. From that point on, we need to study hard in order to learn a new language. We need to learn all the new words, the grammar rules and pronunciation. Some sounds may be so difficult to pronounce that we never quite manage to reproduce them. Only few people manage to acquire true fluency in a second language, and even fewer manage this without spending years in a country where they speak that language every day.

Second language learning is active.

How can this great difference be explained? The difference is found within our brains. When children are born, they are able to distinguish between every phoneme which is used in any language. However, as we grow older, our brain loses the ability to hear all the different phonemes; it concentrates on the phonems it needs for its first language(s). That is the reason, for example, why many Asian people can't distinguish between the "r" and "l" sounds. These sounds don't have any difference in meaning and are therefore mingled together by their brains. They don't need to distinguish between them.