When you think of babies, what do you imagine? Well, what you imagine will probably vary based on how your life relates to babies, but there are two constants we all know about babies: they are absolutely adorable, and they cry A LOT.
Babies cry for many different reasons; maybe because they’re hungry, have an itch they can’t scratch, because they don’t want their parents to have a good night’s sleep, or, of course, all the above. All that is good and well and public knowledge, but what if I told you babies cry…with accents? Yep! All the way back in 2009, researchers in institutions across France and Germany published their findings in Current Biology comparing the crying patterns of 30 healthy French babies and 30 healthy German babies and found that their cries mirrored the intonation of the language spoken in utero.
It is suggested that this is because, while in utero during the last trimester of gestation (pregnancy), while babies are perhaps not able to hear precise words being spoken, they can hear the general vibes of EVERYTHING, perhaps retaining short-term memory of things heard at the end of the gestational period.
With this information, it stands to reason that in the last trimester, tonal information could be picked up and retained by the developing baby, leading to the rudimentary beginnings of language in the form of cries that echo the tones of the language spoken during their gestation. Researchers found that French babies’ cries tended to have a rising melody (meaning they started low and ended high, much like the tones of the French language), while the cries of German babies tended to go the opposite direction, starting high and ending on a low note (much like the tone of the German language)
The more you know 🙂
Thank you for reading this week’s musing!
Sources of information below (Which as always I highly recommend you read so that at your next get together with friends you can bring up the idea of a Bostonian newborn crying)
Musings of a Future NASA Scientist (Science & Music History) 
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