When my son was in kindergarten, a little boy joined the class partway through the year. He had come from Hong Kong and spoke not one word of English. Still, his parents dropped him off in the morning, watched for a while, and left him to his own devices. The rest of us parents watched with concern as this little guy sat there quietly, day after day, obviously not understanding a word that was being said, unable to communicate with teachers or fellow students.
And then, in about week three, he started talking, haltingly at first, and by the end of two months, a stranger would have been hard-pressed to distinguish him from any of the other children in the class. No hesitation, no accent.
There have been many theories over the years about how we learn ~ and how we learn foreign languages, in particular. Research into short- and long-term memory is changing teaching techniques both online and in the classroom (and btw, ni hao is Chinese for "hello," mis Spanish for "my," and przyjaciele is Polish for "friends"): http://www.psmag.com/science/lingua-step-rosetta-stone-and-the-secrets-of-learning-a-language-48600/
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