Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Spontaneous acquisition of new language?

My son is very exceptional. He was tested by a neurologist at Texas Children's Hospital and his IQ is extremely high. He also has Sensory Processing Disorder and is possibly on the spectrum. He will be 5 this summer.

In the past week, he began speaking a new language. At first, I wasn't sure what language he was speaking because he has made up his own languages in the past. But, now that I've done some research, it is clearly Russian. He seems to speak it fluently.

I don't know anyone who speaks Russian and since he only has access to DVDs, I know he didn't learn it from TV.

Has anyone ever heard of this before?

I would bet that at least one of the DVDs he has access to has an option for Russian audio, if everything else you say is true, and he really has not had any other live, TV, or internet exposure to the language.

My DD loved to watch her favourite DVDs in other languages when she was little. I was not aware of her learning to speak those languages but she certainly watched DVDs in them quite regularly by choice.

It's hard to tell online because you can't hear voice but I sound curious rather than disbelieving with my eyebrows wrinkled trying to think of a way this could have happened. How do you know it's Russian? What were some of the words or phrases? (if you wrote them down). Was it a whole lot, paragraphs or single words? I don't not believe you. What does he say and what's the translation? That would give us context clues to where he might have picked it up. You'd be very surprised how sometimes they can memorize stuff from hearing it once. They're little sponges. I've got a 7 month old who keeps using phrases correctly too often for me to call it a coincidence. She has always had a habit of copying the amount of syllables in a word from 2,3, or 4 syllables. When she chooses not a trained trick. The other day she copied a five syllable beat then quite clearly said "I did it.". (one of her brothers catch phrases he picked up from Dora). I've heard her say "I did it" before. Actually "I deyit" the same way her brother says it plus a couple other phrases in a correct context. But she doesn't talk yet, she just makes baby sounds. Other than the out of nowhere full sentences she uses correctly sometimes. So I have to say she doesn't talk enough to call it talking but too often to call it co-incidence. Luckily she does the same stuff around the hubby so someone else notices.
She memorized stuff. She sings some of the verses of "our song" sometimes, approximating the verse pretty closely. Also she was playing with a toy that said "first there's the egg". She said a while after playing with it "ffff eh eh a". Why am I typing all this here? It has only vaguely to do with the title of the thread and even less to do with what you say your son has done. I ask myself this and answered, maybe to introduce myself and maybe hear more of your story and find out what you're thinking about it happening.
I know that children memorize easily. And my baby copies the tune correctly on the few little bits she's ever sang along to with this as well:

Welcome!

Wow. That's something I haven't heard of before. Your son sounds like quite a kid! When you ask him how he knows this new language what does he say??

Would you consider taking your test scores and achievement testing (if you have any) and anything else you might have and applying to the Davidson Young Scholars Program (DYS) if you haven't already? From what you have described above, he seems like the type of child they were created to assist. You can search on "DYS" here on this forum if you have questions after you check out the info on the web or you can always just ask as you did above. It appears to be a wonderful program to help with raising a PG child. They have likely seen children "more like yours". And I understand they also have a forum... Maybe someone there has seen something like this before..

I think the above posters are right. He probably got the Russian from one or more DVDs. If true he is probably not speaking Russian fluently yet, but that's irrelevant; it may be evidence of some great intellectual talent. A DYS application sounds like a good idea, especially if you think he may need extra support for SPD, autism etc.

Or he heard it in the background at the grocery store, Restaraunt, or mall. I could see a kid hearing something a parent was too busy to hear in a public place. If he did hear a conversation in Russian and it stuck in his head long enough to repeat it correctly later, yeah, I'd be fishing around for someone who might understand too.
I told the hubby what I'm typing right now because he's sitting here watching tv and he said yeah, our three yr old just heard a song in the car and we came inside and he was singing it. I know I've been at the store and he hears a baby crying across the store, faintly, that I didn't notice. I know because he says something.
So, yeah. It's more likely that you saw what you thought you saw happen and it's related to giftedness.

Are you sure it's another language? Could it be that he is playing with language (talking backward for example)? Could this be echolalia of foreign phrases?

wow, neat. i vote for the russian option on the dvds - did you check? does he operate the dvd player himself? (only asking because my brilliant DS is just about 10 and has never had any interest in operating things like that, i have to push him to do it himself if he wants to watch a DVD!!)

same DS had some echolalia type issues when he was dealing with speech delay and frustrations early on, around age 18month-22 months. Once I thought he was babbling and my SIL recognized that he was counting in Chinese lol pretty sure he heard it on a Baby Mozart video or something!! He has very little interest in foreign languages right now.

It is not April Fools day, but I have a feeling someone is trying to pull one over on us. A first post by someone named nuttybuddy about such a bizarre event got me thinking this might be the case.

Sorry if this is not the case. But if this is the case, very well done, the post sounds very convincing.