A baby cries in its mother tongue from as early as three days old.
German researchers, studying the cries of 60 babies born to French and German-speaking families, have found that babies begin to pick up their parents' accents whilst still in the womb. They say the babies are probably trying to form a bond with their mothers by imitating them. The newborn French babies cried with a rising "accent" whereas the German babies' cries had a falling inflection.
The findings in the journal Current Biology suggest that unborn babies are influenced by the sound of the first language that they hear when in the womb. It has been known for some time that foetuses could memorise sounds from the outside world in the last three months of pregnancy.
Kathleen Wermke from the University of Wurzburg, who led the research, said that the data showed ".....the importance of human infants' crying for seeding language development."
Dr Wermke's team analysed the cries of 60 healthy newborns when they were three to five days old. The results showed clear differences in the shape of the infants' cry melodies that corresponded to their mother tongue.
She said: "Newborns are highly motivated to imitate their mother's behaviour in order to attract her and hence to foster bonding."
November 2009
