Newborn babies crying language

Oui or nein: with what accent does your baby cry?

The next time you heard a baby crying, do not shush it. It is simply learning its future mother language. That is what a new French-German study suggests. Babies start to learn language in the womb, long before their first babbles


By LUAN GALANI (luan.galani@wavemagazine.net)
from Curitiba, BRAZIL


Wails of newborn babies may sound the same to the ears of parents all over the world, but according to scientists, that is not the case. An astonishingly remarkable research found that babies eavesdrop on their parent's conversations while still in the womb, picking up their accents and bawling in totally different tones.

This study was conducted by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, the Centre for Pre-language Development and Developmental Disorders at the University Clinic Würzburg, and the Laboratory of Cognitive Sciences and Linguistics at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.

In this study, the scientists compared recordings of 30 French and 30 German infants aged between two and five days old. The researchers digitally recorded the cries and used computer software to analyse the results.

The French baby cries tended to start low and then rise in pitch, tending to cry with a rising melody contour. In contrast, their German neighbours tended to start high and then drop in pitch, preferring a falling melody shape.

Led by the German psychologist Kathleen Wermke, the researchers say the patterns fit with characteristic differences between the two languages. The reason for this is presumably the differing intonation patterns in the languages, which are already perceived in the uterus and are later reproduced. Newborn babies tend to have simple cries, but as the days pass, their cries become more sophisticated.

Breaking old theories up

The French-German research is challenging long held views about how babies learn to speak. Most linguists strongly believe that the building blocks of language appear around the third month, when babies begin babbling. But Wermke's team believes the seeds to language are found in the cries of newborn babies.

Previous studies have shown that human foetuses can memorise sounds from the external world by the last three months of pregnancy and are particularly attuned to melodies in both music and language.

Wermke's team wrote in the specialized journal 'Current Biology' that their research showed an extremely early impact of native language and confirmed that babies' cries are their first proper attempts to communicate specifically with their mothers. "Newborns are probably highly motivated to imitate their mother's behaviour in order to attract her and foster bonding", they explained. "Because melody contour may be the only aspect of their mother's speech that newborns are able to imitate, this might explain why we found melody contour imitation at that early age". Now you know that when you heard a baby crying, do not rush to shush it. It is simply developing its future first language.


(Published: 18.12.2009.)