Your baby's first brush with the language you speak takes place while he is still in the womb. His very first cry is audibly shaped by the language he heard before he was born, said a new study.
A team of scientists from France and Germany, comparing the gurgles, coos and cries of French and German newborns, found that baby talk is not universal.
Earlier research had shown that by the third trimester, human foetuses can memorise sounds from the external world and are especially keyed in to the melodic qualities of music and speech.
It has been known, for example, that newborns prefer the voices of their mothers and can decipher emotional content - anger or joy - from the intonation of maternal speech.
However, even if tiny tots can perceive differences in language, it was widely held that they are incapable of vocalising those distinctions.
The new research, published in the upcoming issue of the US-based Current Biology, shows that this assumption is wrong.
Researchers, led by Kathleen Wermke of the University of Wurzburg in Germany, recorded and analysed the cries of 60 healthy newborns ranging in age from three to five days.
Half the babies were born into French-speaking families and the other half were surrounded by German as they grew in the womb.
Astonishingly, cry melodies were clearly shaped by the mother - and their mothers' - tongue. The French newborns tended to cry with a rising melody contour, while the German tots wailed with a falling tone, both signature features of each language, the study found.
'These data support the importance of human infants' crying for seeding language development,' Dr Wermke said. They also reinforce the idea that some limitation to acquiring language skills at the earliest age may be more physical than cognitive.
It has been shown that babies can begin imitating vowel sounds from about 12 weeks. However, this skill depends on a degree of vocal control that is not possible physically at an earlier age.
'Newborns are probably highly motivated to imitate their mother's behaviour in order to attract her and to foster bonding,' the study noted. 'Melody contour may be the only aspect of their mother's speech that newborns are able to imitate.'
This article was first published in The Straits Times.
