Human speech is a bad analogy. A better analogy would be grammar and spelling, which would make OP's argument stronger. The very argument you disagree with.

Truth is, you first learn the basics of speech communication. You understand sounds come from your mouth and given a specific cadence and tone you can form words to get what you want. This is no different than understanding the basic principals of computer programming. Principals all computer languages use. Specifics of the language (syntax, grammar, spelling) is something that can be mastered later, but without the principals, you're not going to master anything. This is a major reason why there are so many bad PHP examples out there. People don't learn to program, they learn to write PHP code poorly.