Original photo by FreshSplash/ iStock
The number of global languages fluctuates each year — as of 2021, linguists recorded 7,151 actively spoken languages. But one dialect that has gone uncounted is the only language we can all decipher without a translator: baby talk. That’s because parental prattle using a softer tone and more rhythmic inflection — also called “parentese” — is believed to exist across nearly every spoken language. Recently, Music Lab researchers, now part of Yale’s Haskins Laboratories, set out to determine if caregivers of all backgrounds alter their speech when talking to babies. They recorded more than 1,600 parent-baby interactions across 18 languages and six continents, including urban, rural, and hunter-gatherer societies. The results showed that adults communicating with infants modified their voices and speech patterns in the same high-pitched, sing-songy way, transcending culture or language. What’s more, over 51,000 adults who listened to the recordings were able to correctly distinguish if the speakers were talking to babies or adults around 70% of the time — even when the listener spoke a different language.
Oops, incorrect!
It's a factBabies — entirely oblivious to manners — are notorious gawkers, and for good reason: Watching mouths helps them learn to speak. A 2012 study revealed infants between 6 and 12 months hyperfocus on speakers’ lips instead of eyes, which helps them decode and replicate words.
Parentese once had a reputation as silly, but some scientists believe that baby talk — at least the kind using real words, if delivered in an exaggerated tone — may have evolved as a tool to help babies and parents bond while teaching language skills. High-pitched sounds catch a baby’s attention, and stretched vowel sounds help them process and replicate new words. Using repetitive phrases, which can be annoying to anyone who’s outgrown diapers, is credited with helping babies memorize words and establish an early vocabulary. Recent research into baby talk’s benefits encourages parents to chit-chat with their infants from the start — young brains grow at a staggering speed, up to 55% of their final size in just the first three months after birth.
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More people speak ______ as a first language than any other mother tongue.
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More people speak Mandarin Chinese as a first language than any other mother tongue.
Some bat pups babble like human babies.
They’re tiny, love milk, and make adorable babbling sounds — baby bats, they’re just like us! In 2021, chiropterologists (aka bat scientists) studying bats in Central and South America discovered that at least one bat species learns to communicate by making babbling sounds, similar to human babies. Greater sac-swinged bat (Saccopteryx bilineata) pups spend their days nursing, sleeping, and practicing their species’ songs and calls by making repetitive, rhythmic chirps. In 2021, researchers recorded and analyzed more than 55,000 bat sounds and determined the pups worked through 25 distinct syllables that make up the language adult bats use to attract mates and protect their territories. S. bilineata babies were recorded babbling up to 40 minutes at a time, and often during interactions with other bats that encouraged the practice pronunciations. And surprisingly to researchers, all baby bats babbled, even though only adult male sac-winged bats sing. Scientists have yet to identify other bats that produce practice patterns, but with more than 1,400 bat species worldwide, it’s possible we just haven’t heard them yet.
Nicole Garner Meeker is a writer and editor based in St. Louis. Her history, nature, and food stories have also appeared at Mental Floss and Better Report.
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