Container Theory of Language

It is not uncommon for persons unfamiliar with linguistics to suggest that the brain and speech mechanisms of children probably function better when they are unencumbered by more than one language. In this view, it is assumed that to avoid confusion, developing one language at a time is preferable to using two or more languages concurrently, especially in school classrooms. This can lead to the conclusion that bilingual education is unwise. The basis for this is the notion that the brain and the apparatus for language learning and production are similar to a one-lane road or a container with limited capacity. Parents and even school personnel are often surprised to learn that the human brain appears to have unlimited capacity to process language and that its limits, if any, are not yet known.

To understand the reasons for these false assumptions, it is necessary to understand some important features of languages, how they are learned, and their patterns of use. For many people, perhaps for most, the organs of speech production become accustomed to one language and have difficulty learning new sounds that do not exist in the mother tongue. The nuances of one's native language are learned early on by the nerves and muscles involved. In time, muscles and nerves lose the ability to make sounds that are not used in that language. The trilled “r” in Spanish is difficult for native English speakers because it does not exist in English and it is difficult for the speech organs of monolingual English speakers to produce. For native Chinese speakers, the challenge is even greater because Chinese does not contain the “r” sound at all, trilled or otherwise. Some scientists suggest that some sounds may be forgotten, because at birth, babies are capable of making the sounds of every language in the world. This seems logical. If there existed a language whose sounds could not be learned by infants, that language would quickly evolve and be replaced by a modification of that language that would not include the “impossible” sounds. What may actually happen in infancy is that children's brains keep track of sounds that are used in their environments and keep those sounds as part of their active repertoires of speech. Sounds that are not part of their native languages fade away, making it difficult to learn a second language without a distinguishable accent. It is important, however, to distinguish between speech and language. [Page 172]While meaningful sounds are part of what we commonly know as language, they are more properly called speech, because they concern only the spoken version of a language, not the written form.