Babys first words!!

/mamamamama/./dadadadada/. What is this? Is it gibberish? Wellnot really! To put it simply I would say that this is music to a parents ears! These are very often a babys very first words. So what exactly is this pure instinct or mere experimentation? Some are adamant about the fact that babies all over the world will purposely choose to call their parents before uttering any other words mainly due to the biological connection they have with them. This explains why every other sound which comes out of an infants mouth is totally ignored by the ever-sokeen parents. And lets be honest hereyou would want your child to call YOU first, wouldnt you? (In my years of being surrounded by people and babies Ive even overheard mini-arguments between parents during which the mother was totally convinced that her child loved her more because his or her first word was /mama/ and vice versa). However, these eager parents are unfortunately wrong. Not only are

/mamamama/ and /dadadada/ sounds which are totally unrelated to the biological connection between a child and his or her parents, but neither are these sounds a babys first utterances. Speech is a very complex area in a human being after all it plays a very big role in the way we communicate throughout our whole lives. It is specifically for this reason that even when a baby cries communication is being established (even though sometimes we might not understand what causes the crying). In fact, studies have shown that child language acquisition takes place in 5 stages. 1. Crying generally during the first two months of a childs life and it is the most primitive form of vocal sound. Children cry to try and communicate their state of being (hunger, discomfort, pain etc.) to adult human beings. Some of the most basic areas of speech, such as the ability to control air flow and produce rhythmic utterances, are being established at this time (taken from The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language David Crystal).

2. Cooing - these sounds begin to emerge when a baby is round about 6 to 8 weeks. Cooing sounds develop together with crying and they are quieter, lower-pitched, and more musical, typically consisting of short vowel-like sounds (taken from The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language David Crystal). 3. Vocal Play - at this stage a baby is more in control of the sounds he or she is producing. This shows that at this point babies begin to experiment with their vocal chords and they begin to discover that different sounds come out of the mouth when the airflow is controlled in one particular way as opposed to another, or when the mouth is shaped in a specific way. This stage takes place when babies are between 3 and 4 months old. 4. Babbling sounds like /mamama/ and /dadada/ begin to be produced during this stage. At this point (which lasts for about 5 to 6 months) babies start experimenting with different syllables, consonants and vowels. At the beginning its generally a repetition of the same consonant and the same vowel, however, as time goes by children will also start changing the consonants and vowels in the different syllables. So for example a sound like /mabuda/ is now possible for a child to utter. At this point a child would still not know that sounds have meaning. 5. First Words Prosodic features, such as the rhythmic and melodic features of the mother tongue, would be highly developed by this stage. Even though vowels and consonants are still not fully articulated at this point, children generally tend to rely heavily on these prosodic features in order to get their message across, and since they are frequently successful in doing so, it can be said that at this stage babies start uttering their first words. Finally (and this is very interesting!!) here is a sequence of the development of consonants in babies which emerged after a study that was carried out by Pamela Grunwell in 1987. /m, n, p, b, t, d, w/ - by the age of 2

/k, g, h, / - by the age of 2.5 /f, s, j, l/ - by the age of 3 /t, , v, z, , r/ - by the age of 4.5 / , , / - after the age of 4.5

So in conclusion, the only reason why a baby says /mamamama/ and /dadadada/ before anything else is that the nasal sound /m/ and the plosive /d/ are two of the easiest sounds for kids to utter. I apologise if Ive just burst your bubble.