Baby is speaking
Your baby learns about language before she even starts to talk: listening to any change in sound, rhythm and intonation of your speech.
© Thinkstock
The moment when your child begins to speak is very exciting. Now you have some precise information about what your child knows and thinks; it's as if language provides you with a window to look in on your child's mental ability. It's also the tool with which she can learn. She no longer has to rely on crying to communicate.
Despite a great deal of research we still don't know exactly how a child acquires language. What we do know, however, is the general sequence that all children follow.
We also know that your baby learns a lot about language before she even starts to talk: long before she knows what the words mean she'll listen to any changes in sound, to the rhythm and the intonation of your speech.
She'll also learn about verbal rituals before she begins to speak and will soon know that first one person and then another speaks.
Early speech
For each month that your baby develops she will master new words and new grammatical rules. But learning to speak is infinitely more important than learning about vocabulary and grammar. Your child's main concern is communicating and interacting with people around her.
Children develop at their own speed and this applies to speech as well as other aspects of development. Don't worry if she doesn't seem to be as quick at picking up language as others - encourage her and let her take the time she needs.
How speech develops
Studies have shown that even a few days after birth babies will respond more to speech than to any other noise.
Up to six weeks: As soon as your baby's born she'll start to make sounds. Initially they will be cries - cries for food, for affection, or because she's uncomfortable. Along with these she'll start to make little burbling noises as a mark of her pleasure and contentment.
- Around six weeks: She'll begin to respond to your smiling face as well as your voice with a more exaggerated gurgling. Although she's not literally talking to you she's communicating, and what's more she's learning to communicate in the way that adults do. For example, on seeing you vocalizing at her, your baby will respond with mouth and tongue movements and wait for your reply before reacting again.
- Three to four months: Your baby will make soft, cooing noises. At this stage the sound will be of single syllables with an open vowel sound. The first consonants she'll use will be p, b and m so it's hardly surprising that she'll say “Maa” or “Paa”, but she won't understand the significance of what she's saying at this time.
- Seven months: She'll be increasingly responsive to sounds, whether of the human voice or music. She'll expand her cooing into two-syllabled words by repeating the initial syllable: “Maama”, “Beebe”, “Daada”. This stage will be followed by explosive sounds of exclamation: “Ai”, ”Imi”.
- Eight months: Your baby will continue to babble, but she'll also learn how to shout to deliberately attract your attention. If she's near you when you're having a conversation with someone she'll pay close attention to whatever you're saying and will then turn to watch any reply that's made to you. Her babbling may become quite musical and she could try to imitate you when you sing a nursery rhyme to her or put on her musical box.
- Nine months: Your baby's speech will become noticeably more elaborate as she starts to join up the syllables she knows and pronounce them with sentence-like phrasing. So, with the rising and falling intonation of adult speech she'll say: “Ca-mama-dah-ba”. Once she starts to make up sounds like this, technically called jargoning, you'll know that she's just about to start talking.
- 11 to 12 months: Your baby will probably say her first “real” words some time during this month. The emergence of these first words is as much controlled by your baby's physical ability to articulate and make speech sounds as it is by her intellectual ability to make connections between objects and labels. The words she chooses will almost certainly be the names of things that are important to her: people (like mama, dada); animals (dog, cat); objects (cup, ball).
Posted 30.06.2010
Get more on this subject…
