But today I'm going to talk to you about something you can't see --

但是今天我要跟大家談談你所看不到的東西

what's going on up in that little brain of hers.

are demonstrating to us that what's going on up there

and the 800 people who speak Koro in the world --

understands [is] that, to preserve this language,

都很清楚，想要保存這個語言的話

那就必須跟新生兒說這個語言。

Why is it that you can't preserve a language

is that language has a critical period for learning.

The way to read this slide is to look at your age on the horizontal axis.

your skill at acquiring a second language.

青春期以後就掉到圖的外面了。

are trying to figure out why it works this way.

想盡辦法要找出原因來解釋這個現象。

on the first critical period in development --

babies try to master which sounds are used in their language.

We think, by studying how the sounds are learned,

我們想，藉著研究語音是如何學起來的

we'll have a model for the rest of language,

我們就能把剩下的學習語言的機制建立起來，

and perhaps for critical periods that may exist in childhood

using a technique that we're using all over the world

適用於各地的嬰兒和所有的語言。

and we train them to turn their heads when a sound changes --

我們訓練嬰兒，當聽到語音改變時會轉頭

六個月大的小嬰兒很喜歡這個遊戲。

They can discriminate all the sounds of all languages,

都有能力去分辨所有語言的所有語音

no matter what country we're testing and what language we're using,

不論我們在哪一國用哪一個語言測試。

and that's remarkable because you and I can't do that.

這是了不起的，因爲這件事你我都辦不到。

我們的聽力是受到我們的文化束縛的。

We can discriminate the sounds of our own language,

我們只能分辨我們自己語言裏的語音

別的語言裏的語音我們是聼不出有什麽不同的。

什麽時候這些一生下來為世界公民的小嬰兒

turn into the language-bound listeners that we are?

會變成像你我一樣只懂得單一語言呢？

And the answer: before their first birthdays.

What you see here is performance on that head-turn task

for babies tested in Tokyo and the United States,

sounds important to English, but not to Japanese.

這兩個在英語不一樣但在日語裏沒差別的音。

So at six to eight months the babies are totally equivalent.

六到八個月的嬰兒的表現完全一樣

Two months later something incredible occurs.

兩個月後，不可思議的事發生了。

The babies in the United States are getting a lot better,

are preparing for exactly the language that they are going to learn.

所以，我們要問，在這關鍵的兩個月

This is the critical period for sound development,

在嬰兒的腦袋裏發生了什麽事？

The first is that the babies are listening intently to us,

第一是，嬰兒很密集地聼我們的發聲

and they're taking statistics as they listen to us talk --

他們一邊聼一邊在腦袋中作統計

So listen to two mothers speaking motherese --

the universal language we use when we talk to kids --

也就是所有的媽媽跟小孩說的話——

(Video) English Mother: Ah, I love your big blue eyes --

（影像）美國媽媽：啊，我好喜歡你的藍眼睛

Patricia Kuhl: During the production of speech,

Patricia Kuhl ：在學習語音的階段

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