What does it mean when a child has a language disability? 

It means that in some manner, s/he has trouble expressing (saying) his/her thoughts and feelings and/or s/he has trouble understanding what is being said.  This can occur when a student does not understand the vocabulary being used or able to follow directions...any number of things.  The English language is very confusing.  Many times we use expressions like: " Oh, you're full of baloney."  We know that to mean " You're kidding, that's not true", a student with a language deficit will not understand it for what it means, but rather ignore it all together and miss the message, or think that someone is actually filled with baloney.  Sometimes a student will become overwhelmed with the amount of words being used and lose the message, other times there may be too many directions and a student can't remember all of the directions and may give up.  The possibilities of how this difficulty manifests itself is vast. 

It can also refer to grammar.  For example a student may say "I gots a new game for my birthday".  We know that "gots" is not a word and that the proper thing to say was that "I got a new game for my birthday." Another common example is "I ain't never seen a thing like that".  We all know that ain't is not really a word and "ain't never" together just makes it worse.  Rather it should be something like "I have never seen anything like that."

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