Language Research

I have personally held the belief that "bilingual" toys were a scam. First of all, I have never observed a young child acting attentive to a loud toy or the television noises. Secondly, I disagree with the widespread use of "bilingual". You are not bilingual if you understand that "donde esta..." means "where is...", but you might be bilingual if you understand asking "donde esta..." will help you find what you are looking for. Too many language learning songs, toys, and games are just translators. Bilingual children are capable of thinking in other languages, so they don't have to translate.

John and I watched an amazing video last night that literally made me jump out of bed (very painful with my aching back supporting my large uterus). TED is a nonprofit organization with the goal of hosting talks at conferences that range in subjects, but all share high intellectual thought and conclusions. The talks are archived on their website for the public to view for free. Patricia Kuhl's talk about baby's recognition of different sounds in languages is what we watched last night. Not only did she show that infants are much more capable of discerning different sounds used in other languages at an early age, she also showed that learning language through video or audio recording does not affect the brain the same way as interacting with a speaker. The study could be used to show that the Baby Einstein language toys, dvds, and cds are totally useless. I encourage you to watch the video yourself and explore other videos at ted.com