Editing 2839: Language Acquisition

{{comic
| number    = 2839
| date      = October 9, 2023
| title     = Language Acquisition
| image     = language_acquisition_2x.png
| imagesize = 193x239px
| noexpand  = true
| titletext = My first words were 'These were my first words; what were yours?'
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by THESE WERE MY FIRST WORDS - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
{{w|Language acquisition}} is the process by which humans, generally infants, learn a language. 

There are many theories as to how this process works, but Randall takes this phrase literally, saying that infants learn languages one new word at a time. This may be true when learning a second language, but is typically not true for infants learning their native language (mother tongue). It is a common milestone to celebrate a child's "[https://www.parents.com/baby/development/talking/baby-talk-a-month-by-month-timeline1/ first word]", but typically these would be simple words, such as "mama" or "dada". 

The child's sentence is twelve words, all unique. This implies these are the only words known so far, which would be a very unusual set of words to be the first ones learned. Furthermore, the child appears to have learned some fairly advanced grammatical concepts in order to construct this fairly complex sentence. Learning grammar typically takes much longer, and only occurs once a child has learned sufficient vocabulary to recognise patterns in how the words are used.

Interestingly if this sentence is true, the child has learned the word for 12 before learning the words for any other numbers, and so could not have given a quantitative update on previous days.

The title text makes a self-referential joke about the concept of "first words", where a supposed child discusses one's own first words in a complete sentence. There are seven unique words in the title text, most of which do not appear in the comic image, suggesting the title text and comic image referred to two different children.

[[2567: Language Development]] has had a similarly obscure take on language acquisition.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[A child, drawn as a smaller Hairy, stands next to some blocks with letters on them (A, B, ə). Megan and Cueball stand to the right of him.]
:Child: Vocabulary update: I learned another word today, bringing my total to twelve.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics with babies]]