Suppose you were reincarnated as a baby in a different world where the language is completely different from what you know. How would you go about learning the local language on your own, assuming that the world isn't very developed and books are quite rare?
Also, how would you go about learning a language, if you don't understand any language? Ex: You grew up in the forest by yourself.
Note: This is research (?) for a possible WN that I may write, in the future. I would like to know how a person would overcome the language barrier in an isekai. I don't like how many novels just gloss over or give the MC a translation skill, so I would like inputs to make my novel, more realistic.
1st off, babies do it all the time. So, you should look at how real human babies learn language.
Really, if you have put real study into how learning languages works, you find out there are only 2 things a baby has that gives them the ability to learn their first language that other people learning a second language don't have. First is necessity. They have no other option. So, if they want to communicate, picking up the words their parents are teaching them is the only option.
Second is the patience of their teachers. People who are teaching a child to speak expect that the child doesn't know much yet and therefore are patient enough to teach them a few words at a time. People will also go out of their way to teach the child individual words by showing them objects and then naming it for the child. Also, if the child gets something wrong, the parent will very calmly correct them.
People say that babies and children somehow have an ability to learn new languages that adults do not have. This is a completely false rumor developed to satisfy lazy people trying to excuse themselves. The truth is, an adult who is dedicated to learning a new language can learn it in only about 25% of the time it would take a child if they really put their mind to it. It takes a child around 4 years to gain a fair degree of real mastery over their native language. An adult can learn the same amount in 4 semesters at a college. (AKA, 1 year.) Neither one has true mastery over the language after this amount of time, but both can speak fairly reliably to a native speaker of the language and express their ideas clearly.
Also, shameless self-plug, I actually already went the exact same route you are talking about here. I usually recommend taking tips from other books that do the same thing. It makes me pretty excited that I actually have the chance to recommend my own for this purpose for once. (I also made my own custom language partially based off Sumarian for the purpose of this story, and in the first 20 chapters which take place before I do a bit of a time-skip I have all the natives in my story talk only in the native language and then afterwards I translate only the specific words that my MC has learned.)
