Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Infants understand language via rhythm and tone rather than individual sounds

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 93 posts

Re: Infants understand language via rhythm and tone rather than individual sounds

#51

Post by Loughla »

gardenhedge wrote: post #50
Loughla wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We talked constantly to ours. Not about anything in particular. Just narrating everything we did. Constantly. Our oldest was talking in full sentences at 1 year. It was astounding. Now, granted, it was stuff like, "I'm dunna det da fwad" but he was communicating in full thoughts at about the time he walked. People always asked what system we used for teaching him. Our answer was always, "it's boring at our house so w…

Everyone talks to their babies a lot. What does "it's boring at our house" mean?

It's a joke. We live in a very rural area. So there's not much going on. We also don't do personal consumption devices (tablet/phone) in the home.

Re: Infants understand language via rhythm and tone rather than individual sounds

#52

Post by seizethecheese »

nitwit005 wrote: post #45
jncfhnb wrote: post #27

The actual article simply says babies pick up on phonetic differences featured in rhyme and song. It says nothing about being crucial to learning.

Yep, the headline is a deliberate lie to make the story more appealing.

Ironically, you also added the word “deliberately” to make your comment more appealing without any evidence

Re: Infants understand language via rhythm and tone rather than individual sounds

#53

Post by danwills »

darkerside wrote: post #44
CSMastermind wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Might as well be raising a dog and a dolphin. That made me chuckle. But it's possible for siblings not to share any genetic material right? A brother and a sister would obviously get different genes from their father and presumably there would be a 50/50 chance of them getting different genes from their mother. There's four unique prototypes of children any two people can produce together.

Four prototypes?

Gamete cells get a random half of all genes from each parent so there's about 2 unique possible 'sets' from each parent, and 2*2=4. However because it's random I think you can only say there are 4 distinct completely unique possibilities in theory, but it would be very unlikely for that to actually happen in practice.

Re: Infants understand language via rhythm and tone rather than individual sounds

#54

Post by jascination »

pstuart wrote: post #35
mattlondon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to vary a lot in my experience. I have two kids who basically got the same treatment. One was eloquently talking in coherent sentences of 4 or 5 words by 18 months ("plane in the sky", "teddy come downstairs", "want something to eat" etc) and was understandable by others outside the family , the other kid was barely able to grunt single words at the same age ("mukk" instead of milk, "nur-sa" instead of nurse…

Yep. Having more than one kid disabuses us of the notion that our parenting was the driver in how awesome the kid turns out. That said, I believe it's nature and nurture in the end.

Same. Have twins (fraternal) and their milestones are completely different despite pretty much identical treatment all things considered. They're also naturally better at certain things (twin A better at physical milestones, twin B better at social milestones).

Re: Infants understand language via rhythm and tone rather than individual sounds

#55

Post by jamiek88 »

krapp wrote: post #48
civilitty wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody has ever suggested rap music is intellectually stimulating in any context, and they use a lot of words. You need less DMX and more Wu-Tang [1] [1] https://pudding.cool/projects/vocabulary/index.html

Or Sage Francis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-9uhUBKah8 Or Killah Priest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu1ObsgF6ts Or Run the Jewels (El-P and Killer Mike): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sff7Kc77QAY Of course Aesop Rock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNrB6--KBqs Graydon Square: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qJop-w0YAY Joyner Lucas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WrMzFlLk7Q MF Doom: https://www.youtub…

I jumped on your comment to say what, no immortal technique?!

And he was there. Of course.

What an asinine comment dismissing an entire culture that was from jstarfish.

Don’t forget Common and also Arrested development / Speech too.

Re: Infants understand language via rhythm and tone rather than individual sounds

#56

Post by jaredhallen »

seizethecheese wrote: post #52
nitwit005 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, the headline is a deliberate lie to make the story more appealing.

Ironically, you also added the word “deliberately” to make your comment more appealing without any evidence

I don't know, I can't imagine they accidentally wrote that bit in the headline.

Re: Infants understand language via rhythm and tone rather than individual sounds

#57

Post by worik »

seizethecheese wrote: post #52
nitwit005 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, the headline is a deliberate lie to make the story more appealing.

Ironically, you also added the word “deliberately” to make your comment more appealing without any evidence

Joining in a trivia dive...

> Ironically, you also added the word “deliberately” to make your comment more appealing without any evidence

Yes.

Fun.

A short comment is not the place for evidence.

I could criticise it for hyperbole but actually the thing I do not like is mor e gratuitous unesecsary adjectives....

Given a startling crisp headline for a mild wishy washy article it is reasonable to assume deliberation.

But is it a lie? Or measly an exaggeration?

I care a lot, it's good

Re: Infants understand language via rhythm and tone rather than individual sounds

#58

Post by earlygray »

My parents were deaf, so there wasn't much singing to me when I was a baby. But I managed to pick up spoken language anyhow so I doubt that singing is vital as the headline suggests. Generally as long as babies aren't deprived or abused when they are young, they'll grow up fine.

Re: Infants understand language via rhythm and tone rather than individual sounds

#60

Post by rand0mx1 »

darkerside wrote: post #44
CSMastermind wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Might as well be raising a dog and a dolphin. That made me chuckle. But it's possible for siblings not to share any genetic material right? A brother and a sister would obviously get different genes from their father and presumably there would be a 50/50 chance of them getting different genes from their mother. There's four unique prototypes of children any two people can produce together.

Four prototypes?

Probably genotype. Isn't it
Post reply on HN