The Language development of children begins in the womb. By listening to the mother's voice in particular, the baby learns its first baby language so well that it can cry in the sound melody of its mum.
How quickly children learn to speak varies from person to person. Parents can support their children's language development. When parents communicate with their little ones in a "child-centred" way, they support their child's language acquisition. The Max Planck Institute has shown this in a Study found out.
The first question to ask is: What does "child-directed" speech actually mean? Firstly, it means turning towards the child - and secondly, emphasising the stressed syllables of the words more than usual when speaking. This makes it easier for the child to recognise the difference between stressed and unstressed syllables. This in turn makes it easier for the child to recognise the beginnings of words in spoken sentences and process the information more quickly.
Sounds complicated? Then let's take a look at the example sentence: Dad is sitting on the sofa. If we were to say this to an adult in "adult-directed" language, the sentence would simply flow along without much emphasis. It is different if we address this sentence to a baby in "child-directed" language. In this case, we emphasise the word "sits" and the first syllables of the words "daddy" and "sofa" a little louder and in a higher tone of voice. This allows the child to identify and recognise all three words as new words - and receive the information at the same time: Papa sits on the Sofa.
Back to the study. So the researchers have found out: In order for babies to learn to speak, they must first be able to recognise the individual words in a spoken sentence. The best way for them to do this is to identify the beginning of each word by emphasising it. As with "Papa sits on the "Sofa". That's why it's good when parents communicate with their little ones in this way. Many mums and dads already do this intuitively anyway, the study shows: they adapt their way of talking to their child almost automatically to their child's needs.
