I’ve been musing a lot lately about the first words we learn in a language.  Children first communicate in one-word sentences, then tw0-word and then later more complex sentences.  There is evidence that the same happens for second language learners.  In my experience of picking up a language via TV series, it seems to hold true.  The first words learnt are those that occur frequently in one-word sentences.  This happens for exclamations, like “Ah!”, and “yes”, and “no”.  As time goes on, it becomes possible to identify the words in longer sentences, and eventually to be able to notice patterns in sentences.