Hi, I was adopted from Colombia at about 16 months old. I spoke spanish as a baby, but through my life my parents taought me Eng and I was, I guess you can say "Americanized." I am taking Spanish in school and I am kind of uspet I don't know it as good as I do, however, it is so easy for me. Does coming from a Hispanic background, where the language that I heard when I was born was Spanish, give me some sort of advantage for learing spanish? (Kind of like that hearing mozart as a baby=smarter type of thing)

I don't know if it will give you an advantage or not...

But my daughter's biological father was from el salvador and around her the first year to year and a half of her life, and then never again.

She didn't learn spanish until high school, and was actually a little grumpy that she was being forced to take as much as she was.

Well... now she is quite proficient, has spent a semester in spain, and is adding a spanish major since she finds it so easy.

I cannot say whether hearing her father speak when she was young has given her an edge, but I do think her pride in her heritage had something to do with it. She is half italian, and grew up with that side of the family, so she embraced that early on. Her latin side she didn't really appreciate until HS years and after. Now she sees it a challenge to know the language well and was proud when she'd visit brownville or padre tx to see her grandpa and the locals thought she was a native.

"In fact the inner ear of the foetus is completely developed by mid-pregnancy, and the foetus responds to a wide variety of sounds. He is surrounded by a constant very loud noise in the uterus - the rhythmical sound of the uterine blood supply punctuated by the noises of air passing through the mother's intestine. Loud noises from outside the uterus such as the slamming of a door or loud music reach the foetus and he reacts to them"

http://www.spuc.org.uk/ethics/aborti...an-development

Listen Up Newlyweds and Mothers: Inside the Womb, the Fetus Hears Music :
A year after they are born, children recognize and prefer music they were exposed to in the womb.

http://sparksofgenius.wordpress.com/...s-hears-music/

The Hindu concept of Mother Tongue is that a foetus understands
What the mother speaks.

"What Prahlada Learned in the Womb"

http://srimadbhagavatam.com/7/7/en1

"Abhimanyu uses well the military training he has learned in his mother's womb"

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/21/we...rssnyt&emc=rss

You have in-born abilities for the language which you
Learned as a baby.