Editing Language (section)

===Acquisition===
{{main|Language acquisition|Second-language acquisition|Second language|Language education}}
All healthy, [[Human development (biology)|normally developing]] human beings learn to use language. Children acquire the language or languages used around them: whichever languages they receive sufficient exposure to during childhood. The development is essentially the same for children acquiring [[sign language|sign]] or [[oral language]]s.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Bonvillian |first1=John D. |author2=Michael D. Orlansky |author3=Leslie Lazin Novack |title=Developmental milestones: Sign language acquisition and motor development |journal=Child Development |volume=54 |issue=6 |date=December 1983 |pages=1435–1445 |doi=10.2307/1129806|pmid=6661942 |jstor=1129806 }}</ref> This learning process is referred to as first-language acquisition, since unlike many other kinds of learning, it requires no direct teaching or specialized study. In ''[[The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex|The Descent of Man]]'', naturalist [[Charles Darwin]] called this process "an instinctive tendency to acquire an art".<ref name="Language Instinct"/>
[[File:Kituwah Academy.png|thumb|A lesson at [[Kituwah Academy]], a school where English and the [[Cherokee language]] are [[mediums of instruction]]]]

First language acquisition proceeds in a fairly regular sequence, though there is a wide degree of variation in the timing of particular stages among normally developing infants. Studies published in 2013 have indicated that unborn [[fetus]]es are capable of language acquisition to some degree.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|''Scientific American''|2015|p=24}}</ref><ref>{{ cite news
| first = Beth | last= Skwarecki
| title=Babies Learn to Recognize Words in the Womb
| publisher=[[Science (journal)|Science]]
| date=26 August 2013
| url =https://www.science.org/content/article/babies-learn-recognize-words-womb
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151104124655/http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2013/08/babies-learn-recognize-words-womb
|archive-date=4 November 2015
}}</ref> From birth, newborns respond more readily to human speech than to other sounds. Around one month of age, babies appear to be able to distinguish between different [[Phone (phonetics)|speech sounds]]. Around six months of age, a child will begin [[babbling]], producing the speech sounds or [[handshape]]s of the languages used around them. Words appear around the age of 12 to 18 months; the average [[vocabulary]] of an eighteen-month-old child is around 50 [[word]]s. A child's first [[utterance]]s are [[Holophrasis|holophrases]] (literally "whole-sentences"), utterances that use just one word to communicate some idea. Several months after a child begins producing words, the child will produce two-word utterances, and within a few more months will begin to produce [[telegraphic speech]], or short sentences that are less [[Grammar|grammatically]] complex than adult speech, but that do show regular syntactic structure. From roughly the age of three to five years, a child's ability to speak or sign is refined to the point that it resembles adult language.<ref name="OGrady-Cho">{{Cite book |last1=O'Grady |first1=William |last2=Cho |first2=Sook Whan |chapter=First language acquisition |title=Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction |edition=4th |location=Boston |publisher=Bedford St. Martin's |year=2001}}</ref><ref name="Kennison">{{harvcoltxt|Kennison|2013}}</ref>

Acquisition of second and additional languages can come at any age, through exposure in daily life or courses. Children learning a second language are more likely to achieve native-like fluency than adults, but in general, it is very rare for someone speaking a second language to pass completely for a native speaker. An important difference between first language acquisition and additional language acquisition is that the process of additional language acquisition is influenced by languages that the learner already knows.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Macaro|2010|pp=137–157}}</ref>