A viral video of the cutest baby babbling to her babysitter and mimicking her accent has highlighted the ability of unborn children to distinguish accent and sound while still in the womb.
The adorable exchange was posted first on tik tok but then share to X by Dan Wuori who is an author on early care and education.
The little girl, apart from being unbelievably cute, is obviously already a great communicator, and adores her chats, with both she and her minder collapsing into giggles at the end of the lively conversation about her reluctance to go to sleep after a long day, something familiar to almost every parent.
It’s remarkable to see how baby Orla mimics the sound of the words she hears, but, as Wuori points out, this sort of “deep learning” actually “begins in utero”.
“Do babies develop accents even before they can speak conventionally? The short answer is yes… and these linguistic markers begin even sooner than you might think,” Wuori wrote.
“So many of you tagged me in this video yesterday featuring an infant that babbles with the same Scouse accent as [her]mother. Other than “no” [she] doesn’t speak a single conventional word, but listen to how the rhythm and intonation of [her] vocalizations mirror those to which [she] is exposed daily.”
“As hearing becomes functional during the third trimester, infants are exposed to the distinct patterns of their mothers’ native language – with studies suggesting newborns can already distinguish (and prefer) what will become their native tongue only hours after birth.”
“Incredibly this learning doesn’t wait until the babbling stage to evidence itself. Research suggests that even the cries of newborns reflect this preference. That’s right: babies cry with an accent. One major study on the topic showed that French babies cry with a rising intonation, while German infants favor a falling melody – both reflecting the patterns of their native languages.”
“We’re only just beginning to understand the deep learning that begins in utero. It’s just more evidence that the period from prenatal to three is the most critical window in all of human development.”
It’s remarkable isn’t it? The clearer the window to the womb becomes, the more obvious is the humanity of the preborn child. So much of what we are is already formed and decided and shaped in our first nine months.
In fact, according to The Cut, studies carried out in the Center for Pre-speech Development and Developmental Disorders at the University of Würzburg in Germany, suggest that “babies are learning the nuances of speech even before they’re born, absorbing information about pitch from their mothers while still in the womb”.
“Unlike other voices, that of the mother is not dampened by the abdominal walls and is the most important acoustic speech source for a fetus,” the researchers noted, adding that their results “further underscore the assumption of an early shaping effect of maternal speech.”
The pregnancy site What to Expect, notes that “around week 18 of pregnancy, the structures inside your baby’s ear are well-established enough for your baby to start hearing some limited noises. Some of these are sounds that you might not even notice yourself — the gurgle of your stomach and whoosh of air in and out of your lungs.”
“Over the next few weeks, your baby will hear more and more of the outside world. By weeks 27 to 30, babies react in response to voices and noises that filter into the womb.”
The womb isn’t sound -proofed, and the sound that is clearest to baby is his/her mother’s voice – because when you speak, the sound of your voice reverberates through your bones and the rest of your body, amplifying it, the site explains.
Studies that show the unborn baby’s heart rate increases, suggesting an increase in alertness, when mother speak. It’s a fascinating and hugely interesting idea, that the ability to communicate and preferences around that ability are being established before you ever draw breath.
It’s something we’ve always known really: it’s why we’ve always sang to our babies while we carried them inside, and why they seem to recognised those songs. But now the science agrees.
One University of Washington study found that babies “only hours old are able to differentiate between sounds from their native language and a foreign language” – and said “babies begin absorbing language while still in the womb, earlier than previously thought”.
What the studies don’t seem to explain is why all this increased knowledge and information pointing to the undeniable humanity of the preborn child doesn’t make us more likely to protect them. Until they are born, they increasingly don’t have recognition or even a right to life. It’s why they need others to be their voice.