I was trying to get Sebastien to say "go to bed"(shui jiao) in Chinese for his grandparents (I thought it meant 'goodnight'), but he was uncooperative and the grandparents just started laughing at me. I asked what was so funny and they said I was saying "water dumpling" (shui jiao). It turns out that in Chinese, an emphasis on a different part of an otherwise identical sounding word can mean an entirely different thing. Even after several repeats of the two variations, I couldn't really tell the difference.
(image from http://www.worldfoodieguide.com)
As a baby learns, it turns out they are mostly pruning connections from their brain. A baby's apparent confusion and inability to parse the world is due to an over-connectedness of neurons in their brain. For this reason, if a baby in not exposed to certain sounds from a language at an early age, it will be extremely difficult for them to ever speak that language as a native speaker would. Certain connections within the brain would have already been deemed not useful and severed, making it difficult afterwards to differentiate those foreign sounds.
As a baby I was filled with potential and could differentiate between water dumplings and going to bed, but, in a quest for simplicity, I lost my way...
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