How Babies Listen for Language

by Odds Bodkin

Telling it Straight
Here's a quick experiment. Say the word tell. I know it sounds simple-minded but you're skimming the edge of my article anyway, so why not? It only takes a second.

Tell.

Notice the little dance the tip of your tongue has just performed on the roof of your mouth? Try it again.

Tell.

When you made the "T," did your tongue hold back a little pocket of air, then let it shoot down the back of your front teeth and out your mouth? Don't do this too many times or tell will become strange, as my thirteen year old son Jon calls repeating a word so many times it loses all meaning.

"Feral," I say to him. "The word becomes feral."
"What's 'feral'?"
"Reduced to its essential nature, without any mental meaning stuck to it."
"Oh."

He already knows how weird I am and so accepts these comments routinely. But in his own way, he's exploring his mind and has already discovered that when you repeat a word many times, the imagery it conveys bleaches out and you're left with your tongue, lips, teeth, and breath creating funny noises--what this article is all about--phonemes.

What's a Phoneme?
Word atoms. The essential building blocks of language.

Phonemes. There are only about fifty of them, yet they number plenty for all human languages. Like the Periodic Table of Elements (which Jon is studying in seventh grade science these days), out of these basic spoken elements are built all the compounds in the universe of language.

Try a variation on Mr. T. Try pronouncing the word Sit.

Sit.

Now what's your tongue doing? A little different, eh? Pardon the pun, but does your tongue close like a pull-down attic door and, well, just sit there?

Sit.

An entirely different T from the one that shoots out the air. But still the same phoneme. In fact, we seldom notice the difference. We hear the same "T," filtering out all those tip-of-the-tongue nuances nobody thinks about anyway.

Baby Talk
Babies hear phonemes, too. In 1974, scientist William Condon discovered that beginning in the seventh month of pregnancy, floating in mom's ocean, babies start listening very hard (Science, Jan.11, 1974). He noticed babies in utero made fifty or so distinct muscular movements -- and did so instantly -- whenever mom said something. Each movement, he discovered, matched a phoneme. Same phoneme, same movement. Every time.

Later, other scientists in Stockholm discovered that "babies in the womb were not only hearing, but apparently learning speech and 'practicing' the fine neuro-muscular movements of the vocal tract that are used in crying and vocalizing after birth." (Chamberlain, 1988).

So when the midwife first handed you that wailing newborn of yours, baby had been practicing the big show for quite a while, you can count on it. The point of all this is that your baby, child, or teen has been hardwired for language since fetal times, and how well your child ends up able to use language is something you can get to work on from the get go.

Talk to your baby. Sing to your baby. Play classical music for your baby. And once your baby is born, tell stories to her, or him. Read aloud. Converse. Even if all you get in return is goo-goo gah-gah and some runny poop, don't fret.

There's a genius in there.

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