Question: how children understand speech and learn to read?

Tim Fosker answered on 21 Jun 2011:

Hi @gail07

Great question! It would take me a long-time to go through all the ways children learn to understand speech, but I have discussed this before in answering other questions (see links below).

http://ias.im/58.1528
http://ias.im/58.896
http://ias.im/58.2312

Reading is different from understanding language in general, but learning to read uses the same brain systems as learning to understand language. The main thing to understand about how we learn to read is that for languages that have an alphabet like English, learning to reading is all about learning the association between sounds and letters. If you know how letters should be pronounced you can read any word even if you don’t know its meaning. Unfortunately English doesn’t have very clear rules about how letters should be pronounced. For example ‘i’ is pronounced the same way in mint, tint, flint and glint, but a different way in ‘pint’. So in English you have to learn examples were the rule doesn’t work as well. In languages like Spanish or Welsh for example the rules about how to pronounce letters are very good, so if you learn how to pronounce the letters you could read Spanish or Welsh easily without understanding the meaning of any of the words.

I hope that answers your question.