It’s true: Infants not only babble with an accent, but even their cries reflect the unique musicality of their mothers’ native languages. (Thread 🧵)

Many of you tagged me this week on this video shared by p0lar_fawn (X), which depicts the babbling of a happy French baby. If you listen closely, you’ll notice that the phrasing, intonation and vowel sounds in the little one’s vocalizations - while not yet conventional - sound distinctly French.

As the senses activate near the end of the third trimester, children are exposed not only to the tone of their own mothers’ voices but the prosody of their spoken language. After birth these patterns are evident in both the intonation of their cries and their earliest speech sounds.