> We seem to just pick up our native language so easily as we're growing up, but it seems difficult to pick up a new language with the same ease later on.
Easily? It takes many thousands of hours to learn our native language in the first few years of life.
> I started with learning the sounds of the language first (and how to pronounce the written language) which set up the framework for learning words and phrases later on.
That’s not how language acquisition works. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiTsduRreug https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FRKBxLvKmw
Agree, language acquisition is so cool! That we just ”absorb” the language, or even languages, around us at early age is just amazing. Steven Pinkers 1994 book “The language instinct” gives interesting perspectives.
Do we really learn our native language more easily than other languages?
It takes several years for children to learn to speak properly, and they are not exactly busy with other commitments.
Maybe if we dedicated a couple of years to another language and did not have to work for a living, prepare our own food, clean ourselves and so on, we could learn any language.
I don't have kids, and can't remember what my reading ability was at 4 years old, but I thought when I started reading that I started out by identifying individual characters and trying to sound them out piece by piece? I can't imagine that I built my native language using the whole-word system, but at the same time, that may explain all the spelling tests that I used to do.
I have been learning a completely new language (Polish) for a while now, but I started with learning the sounds of the language first (and how to pronounce the written language) which set up the framework for learning words and phrases later on. I couldn't imagine starting off with learning whole-words. That being said, I think once you have the basic framework start up, you naturally move on to whole words, sentences, and eventually become free with expressing ideas.