Few things offer as many benefits that a child gets from learning a second language . But to maximize these benefits, a child must start young, preferably as an infant. Research shows that an infant's brain comes pre-wired to learn language, and children begin to build their language skills from birth. They can actually differentiate between different languages long before they can vocalize them themselves, and there seems to be no limit to the number of languages a young child can acquire.
Young children effortlessly pick up whatever language or languages they are exposed to. Researchers say that when you are young, you aquire language, rather than having to learn it. If you wait until you are older to start, language becomes something you must learn by rote and memorization. It then becomes work, and few people who start late with a second language ever succeed in becoming fluent with good accents.
When it comes to language, infants are pre-wired to learn. They actually form connections and grow new brain cells to process the particular languages they are exposed to. Bilingual children tend to actually have measurably larger brains with denser grey matter than their monolingual peers. This extra brain power has been shown to give these children an advantage later in life in such areas as logic and math.