
* Created with BioRender.com

* Created with BioRender.com
The ability of humans to speak comes from their sense of hearing. The world around us is filled with all types of sounds and people’s voices.
A baby develops the ability to speak only after they have been exposed to sounds and language in their immediate environment. In most cases, the people in their immediate environment are the parents, family members, and friends. Research has shown that babies can start listening when they are in their mother’s wombs, from 5 months of pregnancy.
A baby with normal hearing is exposed to the sounds, both consciously and unconsciously. The sound vibrations are picked up by the outer ear, and transmitted to the middle, and then the inner ear. In the inner ear, the snail-shaped part called the cochlea contains millions of tiny hair cells. When the sound vibrations pass through the cochlea, these hair cells bend and their mechanical movement is converted into electrical signals that are transmitted to the brain via the auditory nerve.
The auditory-processing region of the brain decodes these electrical signals and learns to associate them with specific sounds (meaning) which is stored in memory.
Around 10 – 12 months of age, the baby now attempts to reproduce the sounds it has been hearing, using its vocal chords present in the throat. The baby continues to hear itself and receive feedback which is sent to both the brain and muscles operating the vocal chords, and unconsciously corrects its pronunciation. Thus begins the phase of speaking.
This iterative process eventually results in full-fledged speech and spoken language.