As I understand it, babies are initially able to produce and hear differences in basically any sound, but will in due time come to hone in on whichever sounds are used in the language they're being raised with. Listening for only a few sounds and remembering how to produce only a few sounds reduces the cognitive load, basically.

I'm able to make a pretty broad range of sounds, but I'm not sure how exactly I gained this ability. A part of it was certainly taking the time to learn the International Phonetic Alphabet and actually consciously learning the mechanics of making different sounds, but another part of it I think was just always enjoying making weird mouth noises, beatboxing, mimicking things, or doing silly voices or accents. Growing up with two languages probably also helped, but I'm told I have a "slight foreign accent" in Norwegian, so the exact extent of that help is a bit questionable.

Anybody, in any case, is able to learn to make new sounds and distinctions. It's probably easier than you might think, although it also might take some perseverance for some people, and you might never get perfect native-like pronunciation — but why should you want that, anyways? Own your accent, I say.

I think the problem with learning new sounds is oftentimes just having bad teachers, though. For instance rolled R's actually are fairly common (non-phonemically) in American English, especially in "what'd" or sometimes other contractions ending in -t'd: /wətəd/ → /wəɾəd/ → /wəɾəɾ‿/ → /wəɾɾ‿/ → /wər‿/ — this coalescence of /ɾəɾ/ to /r/ is considered to be more widespread in African American Vernacular English compared to other forms of American English, though. Like if you've seen that viral video "I've Never Seen Cops Run This Fast" you probably noticed how the cameraman very prominently says "outta there" as "ou[r]ere" and "speed it up" as "spee[r]up".

I summon our resident linguist to explain this in a much better way than I ever could

@Erika3sis@hexbear.net

Nah babies are just able to dedicate most of their waking time to learning language, adults with jobs and responsibilities aren’t.

If we could lock you in a room for a year and all you could do was sleep and practice Chinese, you’d be way better at it at the end of a year than a baby after 1 year.

I don't know fam, most adults with very directed study/practice can become fully fluent in a language in about a year. Babies take like whaat, 5 or 6 years before they start to become regularly coherent? And their vocabulary still sucks for years after that.

You have the advantage of already knowing way more than babies so you've got more to build on.

You are correct, don’t listen to the user telling you this is just a lie/excuse.

https://hexbear.net/comment/5818665

im still undefeated pants shitting champion though