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You don't just learn a language by osmosis. You need resources, and people to work with you.

Is that how you learnt English (or whatever your first language is) then, not metaphorical osmosis but by sitting down as a small child with lots of resources and people to work with you in deliberate study?

It's proven to be harder as we age, but it absolutely does work like that. I would assume Toma didn't more because of little interaction, not hearing dialogue around him, etc.

(And also just because it typically works like that doesn't mean he couldn't have been unusually predisposed against it, or genuinely ill, or too traumatised/uninterested/deliberately disengaging.)

I'd argue that children actually do put in a lot of effort. Parents sit down and teach the kids stuff, and kids are motivated to try and remember things their friends say to them. No empirical evidence though, just a thought.

Parents read picture books to children, play little games to reinforce the associations etc.

It's not automatic, but I can't imagine not trying. Maybe for the first year, you hold out hope of going back, but after that, if people are talking around you, do you not try? If you hear them use the same word for the same thing every time, don't you learn it? Don't you find ways to ask?

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