Babies "cry in mother's native tongue"..

[SoCalDem]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8346058.stm

Babies' cries imitate their
mother tongue as
early as three days old



Page last updated at 10:38 GMT, Friday, 6 November 2009

Babies 'cry in mother's tongue'



German researchers say babies begin to pick up the nuances of their parents' accents while still in the womb. The researchers studied the cries of 60 healthy babies born to families speaking French and German. The French newborns cried with a rising "accent" while the German babies' cries had a falling inflection.

Writing in the journal Current Biology, they say the babies are probably trying to form a bond with their mothers by imitating them. The findings suggest that unborn babies are influenced by the sound of the first language that penetrates the womb.

snip

It was already known that foetuses could memorise sounds from the outside world in the last three months of pregnancy and were particularly sensitive to the contour of the melody in both music and human voices.

Earlier studies had shown that infants could match vowel sounds presented to them by adult speakers, but only from 12 weeks of age. Kathleen Wermke from the University of Wurzburg, who led the research, said: "The dramatic finding of this study is that not only are human neonates capable of producing different cry melodies, but they prefer to produce those melody patterns that are typical for the ambient language they have heard during their foetal life. Newborns are highly motivated to imitate their mother's behaviour in order to attract her and hence to foster bonding
Kathleen Wermke, Unversity of Wurzburg

snip

Their analysis revealed clear differences in the shape of the infants' cry melodies that corresponded to their mother tongue. They say the babies need only well-co-ordinated respiratory-laryngeal systems to imitate melody contours and not the vocal control that develops later. Dr Wermke said: "Newborns are highly motivated to imitate their mother's behaviour in order to attract her and hence to foster bonding. "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."

[notadmblnd]

1. if I'd had know my baby was just imitating me, I wouldn't have cried so much

I swear at one point it was a contest. But we got through it. He's 16 now.

[SoCalDem]

2. I remember being able to distinguish my sons' cries when they were in the hospital nursery

:)

[notadmblnd]

4. Yeah, me too.

I can remember his scream when they were doing his circumcision (it's something I did not want done, but was over ruled by my husband at the time).

[ejpoeta]

3. Abby is five weeks old now and her cries sometimes sound like talking.

I don't know that she's mimicking me as much as her sisters.... i want i want i want!! and then crying louder when i don't get it fast enough.

[Solly Mack]

5. That's why I came out crying, 'Wah, wah y'all'

[YOY]

6. That's ridiculous.

My daughter was not crying in any way that is different from any other baby. She did not "cry in Bulgarian".

[HughMoran]

7. I had no idea that my ex's native tongue was "scream at the top of your lungs"

:)