Turn down the noise, let language find its way in

A foreign tongue began not with speech but with the patient accumulation of sounds and their meanings.

2 min readOct 16, 2026 06:15 AM IST First published on: Oct 16, 2026 at 06:15 AM IST

How do newborn babies acquire language? How do they communicate? When Janet F Werker, the pioneering development psychologist, began researching into the linguistic capital of infants, she came away with an important discovery — that the process began even before birth, through sounds heard in the womb: A lullaby, the first inchoate babble, conversations overheard but not yet understood, auditory experiences that acquire meaning through the early years of life. The ability to listen shaped a child’s grasp of language.

A new study by University College London and Tohoku University, Japan, now follows on its trail and suggests that the best way to learn a new language is to focus on its sounds before wrestling with its grammar. Researchers tested Japanese learners of English and found that the more accomplished learners processed unfamiliar words much as they would any non-speech sound. They leaned less on the left sensorimotor network that serves the mother tongue. A foreign tongue began not with speech but with the patient accumulation of sounds and their meanings.

Its particular appeal and import for linguistics and development psychology apart, it is tempting to draw a larger philosophical lesson from the study. In an age saturated by the ceaseless sound and fury of people vying for attention, self-appointed experts pontificating with unshakeable certainty and those in thrall to their own voice and ideas, there is a case for turning the volume down. To understand another person, one must make room for a voice other than one’s own. The gifted language learner shows that listening is an act of hospitality, that in that simple courtesy of holding judgement, there is also the possibility of comprehension finding its way in.