One of the superpowers that humans have is to soak in knowledge and information in the early stages of life. Language is one of the major things that we acquire as kids and continue to refine as we grow older. This happens automatically and requires no formal teaching. As long as they are surrounded by language, it will come to them eventually.
It is important to note that surrounded by language means interaction. Parents and other people (not just adults, but kids too) do still have to interact with the kid in order for them to pick up the language and to be able to use it for communication. In fact, it’s just as easy for them to acquire multiple languages this way, as long as it’s done in the early stages in life for maximum effect.
And as is with every journey, learning a language comes gradually. Kids will start off from babbling and move on to monosyllabic and polysyllabic words, then will venture into building simple two-word sentences, then add words to build longer sentences ad infinitum.
In the same manner, they will also experiment with and practice languages, leading them to make mistakes in all facets of language use, including mispronunciation.
To paint a picture of both making mistakes and the gradual learning of a language, consider this: a kid first learns by mimicking the language. So, if they learn the word feet, they will for a time say it perfectly. But then, they might revert to foots.
Now, saying revert is not really accurate—they have actually moved forward, just that they started applying grammatical conventions instead of just mimicking.
At this point, the kid understood what the singular form of feet was, and they understood that plural words take an s at the end. Hence feets. But it was wrong because English is a hot mess of a language that follows rule sets from ten if not more languages, and folks who learn it as a foreign language have to deal with the constant facepalming when they realize that buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo is a grammatically correct sentence.
And so, learning a language happens pretty much in the same gradual way, no matter if it’s language production or reception. And this is where mishearing and mispronunciation come into play.
When children learn languages, they will sometimes learn to pronounce them just like they would other words they already know. Hence, cheese crisis and whack-a-mole like guacamole.
