Slashdot Mirror
Babies Begin Learning Language In the Womb
Hugh Pickens writes "Science Daily reports findings from a new study which suggest that infants begin picking up elements of what will be their first language in the womb, long before their first babble or coo, and are able to memorize sounds from the external world by the last trimester of pregnancy, with a particular sensitivity to melody contour in both music and language. Newborns prefer their mother's voice over other voices and perceive the emotional content of messages conveyed via intonation contours in maternal speech (a.k.a. 'motherese'). 'The dramatic finding of this study is that not only are human neonates capable of producing different cry melodies, but they prefer to produce those melody patterns that are typical for the ambient language they have heard during their fetal life, within the last trimester of gestation,' said Kathleen Wermke of the University of Würzburg in Germany. Wermke's team recorded and analyzed the cries of 60 healthy newborns, 30 born into French-speaking families and 30 born into German-speaking families, when they were three to five days old. The recordings of 2,500 cries as mothers changed babies' diapers, readied babies for feeding or otherwise interacted with the youngsters show an extremely early impact of native language, with analysis revealing clear differences in the shape of the newborns' cry melodies, based on their mother tongue."
Surely teaching languages like French and German to poor, defenseless, not even yet born babies breaks some law.
I'm glad we have scientific evidence to back it up, but did anyone believe this wasn't the case? Is anybody surprised by these findings?
Actually I dismissed these "findings" as utter nonsense as soon as the word CRYING was followed by the word MELODY.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Troll? Yes.
But - There is a certain poetic rhythm to the post.
It's sad when a potential artist turns to the dark side.
The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
...Actually I will unconsciously start speaking in broken English...
I once consciously spoke in broken English, while visiting Germany, even though I can speak German without any accent. The reason was that I wanted to get out of a traffic ticket and it worked.
All theory is gray
I'm confused, too, but maybe that's because I no speaka da English.