Foreign Language Immersion

How would listening to a foreign language help a person learn that language?

I got my daughter a bunch of kids’ music CDs and one of them has nursery rhyme kind of songs in English and then in French and it’s called something like “Sing & Learn.” How would she ever learn even a little bit of French from that? It’s not like she knows which words in French correlate to which words in English. I certainly don’t, anyway.

this isn’t exactly comparable to just listening to music, but I’ve had several [college-aged] friends who have studied abroad in both France and Italy. some did not know the language at all, most had a bit of a grasp on the basics (ex. I am good, how are you, where is the bathroom?); they all learned the language well enough to communicate within 2 months. but like you said, being immersed in the language is different than just hearing bits of it in the day. BUT I’d think that kids are much more able to learn a language and connect two languages together than adults are — I’d say she’d probably understand it fairly soon if she listens to them consistently. she’ll learn the language patterns; French is very similar to English in that there is a subject and a predicate (like all the Romance languages). if she’s got the English version to compare it to, I’d think she’d match them up fairly quickly if she’s listening to (and interested in) it often.

you should learn a few words in French too, it might facilitate her learning bits of the language a little quicker.