We’ve all been there: upon meeting a cute infant, we immediately adopt an exaggerated, high-pitched, singsong voice.
Now, a study has discovered that this ‘baby talk’ is the same in all languages, with people altering their voices when speaking to newborns.
Researchers from the University of York and Aarhus University compared the pitch, melody, and articulation rates of babies speaking across 36 languages and discovered similarities.
Christopher Cox, who conducted the study, stated, ‘We employ a higher pitch, more melodic phrasing, and a slower articulation rate when speaking to infants compared to adults, and this appears to be the case in the majority of languages.’
Baby talk, also known as infant-directed speech (IDS), refers to how we speak to infants.
Typically, it consists of slow-paced, high-pitched, animated speech.
Baby speak has been studied for years, but the purpose of the new study was to determine whether it has a common quality.
The researchers analyzed 88 prior studies on the characteristics of baby communication in 36 languages.
Results indicated that pitch, melody, and articulation rates were similar across the majority of languages.
However, they discovered that the extent to which caretakers exaggerate the disparities between vowel sounds varied significantly.
Mr. Cox added, ‘In the English language, caregivers tend to accentuate the distinction between vowel sounds in infant-directed speech, but this appeared to vary across different languages.
“Further research is required to determine why this is the case, although we may assume, for instance, that speakers of languages with a large number of vowels are more likely to explain this speech signal for their children.”
The study also discovered that baby speak evolves as infants gain a greater grasp of language and speech throughout time.
According to experts, pitch and rate of delivery increasingly grow more comparable to adult speaking styles.
However, high-pitched melodic sounds and accentuated vowels persist in early childhood.
Dr. Riccardo Fusaroli, the co-author of the study from Aarhus University, stated, “These results underscore the participatory nature of this speech style, with carers providing dynamic and personalized feedback to their children’s vocalizations and responding to infants’ evolving developmental requirements.”
Professor Tamar Keren-Portnoy, the co-author of the study from the University of York, said, “We have shown how similar speech to babies is in different countries, but our results also demonstrate an astounding degree of cultural variation in the expression of some of the key features.”
