The magazine of the european research area European Commission Copenhagen, a missed chance?

  www.cell.com/current-biology/

The baby 

has an accent

We already knew that, when 

exposed to different languages, 

newborns showed a distinct 

preference for the language 

closest to the one they heard in 

the womb. We now find that their 

cries also echo this accent. A team 

from the Center for Prespeech 

Development and Developmental 

Disorders at Würzburg University 

(DE) has studied the melodies 

formed by the cries of 30 French 

babies and 30 German babies 

shortly after their birth. 

It seems that the French babies 

stress the end of their cries, as 

French speakers raise their pitch 

at the end of words or sentences, 

while the German babies do the 

exact opposite, after the fashion 

of German speech. This is not 

of course really an accent, as 

accents are to do with the way 

words are pronounced, but the 

study does confirm the importance 

of melodies in language learning 

and shows clearly that the proc-

ess begins in the womb with 

the perception and then repro-

duction of the melodies heard. 

The researchers see this as a step 

towards solving the mystery of the 

appearance of language in our 

ancestors.