If someone asked you what you thought was the most impressive human achievement in using the English language, you might answer that it was Shakespeare's plays, Dickens's novels or the Oxford English Dictionary. However, the scope of achievement, even in these great works, is not as great as the difference between a newborn human baby whose main form of expressing himself is to cry and the speech of that same baby three years later.

A new baby cannot understand what you are saying and cannot talk back to you. A three-year-old can say, `Daddy says I can have some sweets tomorrow' In this simple sentence a three-year-old is showing he can report another person's speech, anticipate the future, use a complex combination of verbs (`can have'), hold a conversation, and in this case even use language not quite truthfully as a form of persuasion (`Daddy says'). If you disagree with him he will probably go on to conduct a sustained argument with you!

Children seem to pick up language so quickly and it is so basic to our everyday lives that it is easy to take it for granted and to overlook what a vital and complex skill it is. However, there are good reasons for recognising how important it is to your children and to you. In the first place it gives contact and closeness between you: it is through talking and listening that you get to know each other and eventually to share each other's experience. In the second place it is an important vehicle for learning. For instance, language is the tool which enables a child to tell Mummy what happened at Granny's while she was out. Later on language will be used in abstract arguments (`Supposing that...?') and also to solve logical problems. Still later your child will learn the more formal skills of reading and writing as well as talking and listening. Language, or verbal ability, is one important factor in success at school, although it is not the only one.

The roots of your child's verbal ability lie in the early years between birth and four years old. By the end of this period most normal children have mastered the basic rules of their own language and are able to produce original, creative sentences in any number of combinations. And they do it without any systematic training on your part, though this does not mean you have no part to play.

What is Language?

Language is a system of symbols - they can be sounds as in speech or they can be marks on paper - but language is more than a long list of signs which mean something, that would just be a dictionary. Language is also a system of rules used to create new meanings. Through language we can not only produce sentences that are completely original and that nobody has ever heard before, but we can also understand statements we have never heard before, as we do every time somebody talks to us.

So when a baby learns language he is not only learning lists of words mummy, daddy, cat, and so on - he is also learning to use the rules that help him to combine words into completely new and often very delightful statements such as, `Look, I didded it myself.' As the word `didded' shows, the way he uses the rules may not be the way grown-ups use them but it is sensible as far as he is concerned.

Human babies and young children seem to have a natural ability to learn and use language creatively, but of course your child's enjoyment and mastery of language also depends a lot on you and the other people around him continuing to talk and listen to him.