Babies cry with regional accents

NEWBORN babies cry with regional ‘accents’ copied from their mothers, researchers have shown.
An astonishing new study found that the screams of a five-day-old French baby have a distinct Gallic twang, while German babies have a Teutonic quality to their yells.
The discovery suggests that babies are eavesdropping on their parent’s conversations while still in the womb and are picking up their accents.
The researchers believe newborns could also be crying in regional accents - and that Geordie infants sound different from Brummies.
Past studies have shown that babies can recognise tunes and voices they hear in the womb. However, this is the first to suggest that they are copying speech patterns.
Dr Kathleen Wermke of the University of Wurzburg, Germany and colleagues studied the patterns of baby cries in the first five days of life.
Newborn babies tend to have simple cries that rise and then fall. But as the days and weeks pass, their cries become more sophisticated - varying in pitch and length.
The scientists digitally recorded the cries of 30 French and 30 German hungry babies and used computer software to analyse the results.
The French baby cries tended to start low and then rise in pitch, the researchers reported in the journal Current Biology. In contrast, the German baby cries tended to start high and then drop in pitch.
Dr Wermke said the patterns mirrored the intonation of French and German speakers. ‘French is a very distinctive with respect to intonation,’ she said.
‘If you listen to French speakers you can hear a rise in pitch in words and phrases. In German speakers there is a fall.’