Importance Of Baby Talk Speech

Language is an important tool for communication for everyone even babies and children. We usually find ourselves talk in an abnormal way in front of a new baby like saying ‘hello’, ‘what’s your name?’ or ‘look how beautiful you are!’ although we know that the baby hasn’t learned any language yet and can’t understand a word of what we are saying, but we do that as if the baby does. One of the ways that mothers use to develop a strong bond with their babies is baby-talk. It helps in the development of the language of the baby. However, children need to have some skills and knowledge to acquire the spoken English language so that they can communicate effectively.

According to David Crystal, ‘approximately one in three of the world’s population

In addition, there are so many conventions governing the ways in which varieties of English differ. The different aspects of this task develop at different stages of life, with some continuing into adulthood. (Barbara Mayor, communicating in English, growing up with English, 91-92)

Mothers play an important role in helping their babies to learn their mother tongue without even realizing by talking to them. The most effective ways to let a baby easily pick the language up is by hearing words repeated over and over, loud and clear. Here’s an actual example which was audio-recorded just a few minutes after one baby was born: “oh you are gorgeous, you are gorgeous, you are, you are, you are, oh yes you are…hello …hello… aren’t you beautiful…” The baby wasn’t paying attention, but it had stopped crying and it had its eyes shut. Although the mother was being totally ignored, she kept on talking. Her voice was very high at first when she started talking and then it went all the way down as if she was singing to her baby. So lip-rounding, exaggerated melody of the voice and repetition of words is how mothers talk to their babies. Mothers mostly do that because they

However, cognitive perspectives to language learning focus on children’s linguistic competence. They also focus on the mental processes within children’s minds in making sense of language as a system especially their grammar and vocabulary. Moreover, cognitive perspectives focus on all normal children and what’s common to them rather than how each child is different in the process of acquisition of English. English-speaking children who are between the ages of two months and two years usually express simple semantic relations by producing mini sentences which is known as “telegraphic language”. We usually notice that the child’s utterances consist of content words only as they omit function words while speaking. Function words are articles like (a or the), pronouns like (my), prepositions like (on), auxiliary verbs like (has), morphological inflections like (possessive -’s). However, English-speaking children always make mistakes while speaking and it might seems for us that they are moving backwards. For example, when a child says ‘we catched the mouses’ the child is actually processing and analyzing grammar in his mind which means that he is developing and moving forward. In fact, children’s mistakes show that the child has a creative mind and it’s a sign that he is a powerful learner rather than a child who is imitating his parent’s