Language Development in Children

• Crying: When a baby cries, he is doing what he can to communicate his needs to you in the most basic form. The cries can vary slightly to convey a number of different messages.

(To learn what the different cries of a baby mean, read Understanding a Crying Baby.)

• Babble play: When a baby experiments with her ability to make sounds beyond cries, her babbles consist primarily of non-verbal noises and vowel sounds. They include everything from the soft coos and raspberries to earsplitting squeals of delight.
   
• Canonical or repetitive babbling: This is a fancy way of saying that in this stage of the language learning process, babies begin making repetitive sounds, such as "ma-ma-ma" and "gu-gu-gu." These classic "baby talk" sounds that are made up of one consonant and one vowel will begin popping up in a child's babbles between 7 and 11 months in infants with normal hearing.
   
• Variegated babbling: This type of babbling sounds like your baby is actually saying a whole sentence in the form of a statement or question using the sounds he has mastered thus far plus new inflection, usually without any real words. An example of this stage in the language development process might sound like this:

• "Baba beee-ummm gubba dum-goo-ee?" (ending with a high-pitched voice)
• "Baba beee-ummm gubba dum-goo-ee." (ending with a lower-pitched voice)

 

More often than not however, these lengthy babbles usually lack real words or grammatical structure. This stage typically occurs between 11 and 13 months.

• Single words: Babies learn from watching and listening to the words made by those around them. They eventually attach the meaning of words and objects to their own babbles if they sound alike and are repeated often enough. An example of this is "ba-ba-ba" and the word "bottle." This stage can occur as young as 9 months in babies with normal hearing, though it is more typical to have it occur after 12 months.

(Click Help Your Baby Talk to learn more.)