Source: The Local
If you’ve ever thought that babies in Germany sound just a bit more German than those crawling around in other countries, you’re not just hearing things. Researchers at the University of Würzburg found in two different studies that even newborns cry differently depending on their mother tongue, the team announced on Friday. Specifically the studies compared the way babies cried in Germany to infants in China and Cameroon – two countries where people speak tonal languages, or languages where the tone changes the meaning of the words.
The researchers recorded the cries of 55 newborns from China and 21 from Cameroon during their first days of life. The team wanted to see whether a pregnant woman speaking her native tonal language would have an impact on her newborn’s cries.
Categories: Europe, Europe and Australia, Germany