A short talk by Ming (Agents of Speech) about how children acquire language naturally through repeated exposure and habitual use rather than formal testing. Includes an anecdote from Lombok, Indonesia where a local driver characterizes language as a behavior—a habit maintained by continual use.
How did we learn so many different words? Did we have a lot of tests like we do right now in kindergarten? No. What happened was that we picked up a lot of words, and we picked up words here and there just by listening. And the same goes to children who are delayed. I remember traveling to one place in Indonesia called Lombok, and I was talking to this guy who was driving us around. His English was very good. His Bahasa Indonesia was fluent, perfect. And I was like, hey, I do this for a living. I teach children how to talk. Can I ask you, how do you learn so much language? And then he said, languages of behavior. Behavior. You need it to communicate. I was very curious, so I said, okay, so what do you mean by language is a behavior? Because I understand that the more exposure you have, the better you will be at that language. That particular Indonesian guy said, language is a behavior because we need to keep on using it. It's like a habit. What he meant, I understand that if we have a habit of using a language that we're accustomed to, we never really deviate from it. You need to show that habit of using the language over and over and over again.
