world cultures & travelanalysisThe Conversation: Arts + Culture (US)

The science of baby babbling – and why it can take on accents

the gist

Babbling is the stage in which babies repeat speech-like sounds, usually from before their first birthday, and it gradually turns into recognisable words. Babies learning English produce different babbling from babies learning French, because they imitate the rhythm and sounds of the adults around them. Children understand far more words than they can say, a gap researchers call the comprehension-production asymmetry. Children who babble a lot tend to learn words earlier, while infants with autism are sometimes less likely to babble.

so what

Babbling is how infants practise their language's sounds and show they are learning it, so the accent a baby babbles in reflects the people around them. Talking and interacting with babies is the most effective way to support their language learning.

more on this

background

Babbling is a stage in child development and a state in language acquisition during which an infant appears to be experimenting with uttering articulate sounds, but does not yet produce any recognizable words. Babbling begins shortly after birth and progresses through several stages as the infant's repertoire of sounds expands and vocalizations become more speech-like. Infants typically begin to produce recognizable words when they are around 12 months of age, though babbling may continue for some time afterward.

From Wikipedia: Babbling (CC BY-SA 4.0) ↗ · text CC BY-SA 4.0