Question: How did we learn to speak?

Alex Haragan answered on 15 Jun 2018:

A great question! And not my field of expertise if I am being completely honest.
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What I do know is that humans learn languages to a more complex level than other animals because we have far bigger parts of our brains (proportionately) dedicated to language.
Also the way in which we learn languages as very young children (our “native tongue”) is very different to how we learn a language later in life, even at school or as an adult.
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Again I’m no expert and I’m sure there has been much research into this – but we know very young children have a fantastic ability to learn things intuitively. We don’t stop doing this as adults – but we tend to prefer working within a framework.
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So as an adult you might learn a language by thinking about vocabulary, grammar, structure etc. But thats not how we think when we talk – we just talk. So babies/young children don’t get formal lessons – they just hear us talk. So they appear to learn from mimicry, repetition and listening. Which makes sense when you think about it because we all have accents that are peculiar to region!
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Whats also fascinating is the way we develop making noises to speak. There are noises and letters that simply don’t appear in English. A friend of mine from college was Zambian – he knew multiple languages and some of these required clicks and other noises I just couldn’t make. And when you hear people learning a second language, it is mostly spoken with their original accent.
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In addition, language is far more than just the spoken word. We have phrases, sayings, body language, regional dialect – language is an inherent part of our culture and upbringing.
So in short – I don’t really know, but its a very, very complex part of ourselves!