Language Acquisition

- Understanding the earliest stage of language transformation.

- The typical stages: Babberling, first words and the two word stage.

- Capturing the phases - 'wa-der'.

- Adults speak over 15,000 words a day.

- Comes naturally to us.

- No other animal has ever recorded speech

- Sign Language is just one of 6000 languages

How Language changed gender.

Madam: 

A form of respectful or polite address (substituted for the name) originally used by servants in speaking to their mistress.  

From the 17th to the early 20th cent. madam was the title normally used in addressing a letter to a woman of any rank, except where the use of the name (as in ‘Dear Mrs A.’, etc.) was considered acceptable (‘my lady’, etc., not being admitted in this context).

While in French the title has (with certain customary exceptions) been confined to married women, in English this rule has not been generally adopted, though there are traces of a tendency in the 16–17th cent. to address married women as ‘madam’ and unmarried women as ‘mistress’.

Madam is still the word generally used by persons in positions of service to the public, spec. by sales assistants to female customers, and also as a polite or formal form of address to a woman, esp. one whose name is not known to the speaker.