Professional Documents
Culture Documents
‘’Baby talk is one of the ways mothers and others develop a strong bond with their babies. And it lays
the foundation for the development of language. Without realizing it, by talking to babies in this way
we are beginning to teach them their mother tongue – or tongues, of course, if the baby is in a family
where more than one language is spoken. By repeating the sentences, and making them noticeable, we
are kick-starting the process of language learning. When people start to learn a foreign language,
they know what they need in order to say their first words. They need to hear them said, over and
over, loud and clear, by someone who knows how to do it. It’s the same with babies. If they hear the
same sounds and words and word patterns repeated, they’ll soon pick the language up. But how soon
is ‘soon’? How long does it take babies to learn to talk? And which bits of their mother tongue will
they learn first?’’