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You've probably noticed it in yourself: when you talk to a baby, you automatically use words like “woof”, “dududu” or say “alla-alla” when the bottle is empty.

Linguists have an official name for this phenomenon: Baby Talk or, in German, baby language.

This term is used by researchers to summarize all forms of simplified and often onomatopoeic language that adults use when communicating with a newborn.

Whether baby talk is really appropriate has long been controversial.

Some linguists even assumed that normal everyday language, as used by adults, was better for babies: they would learn the correct language faster.

But a recent international study, in which the University of Göttingen was also involved, proves the opposite: Babies even prefer baby language, no matter where in the world they live.

More than 700 babies on four continents took part in the study with their parents

This is what the laboratory situation looked like for the babies

Source: University of Göttingen / Research Group Psychology of Language

In addition to Germany, the broad study also took place in Canada, the USA, Singapore and Australia.

There, the early communication behavior and language acquisition of a total of 333 bilingually growing up as well as of 384 babies who grow up with only one language were observed.

The babies were divided into two groups: group one comprised bundles of joy between the ages of six and nine months, group two twelve to 15 month old toddlers.

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Each toddler was played a sound recording in which a woman speaks English with her own babies - either in baby language or in adult-friendly language.

The research team recorded the time each child listened carefully.

It was found:

In fact, the toddlers preferred baby talk

Source: Unsplash.com/Minie Zhou

Regardless of whether they grew up with English or not, the experiment showed that all children listened longer and more attentively when the woman used baby language.

The kids, whose first language was English, paid even more attention to the child's tape recording.

The study's lead author, Dr.

Krista Byers-Heinlein from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, explains in a press release: “The more familiar they were with the language, the more they liked the child-friendly language.

And a baby who hears English 75 percent of the time in their home showed a greater preference than a baby who hears English 25 percent of the time. "

The way in which the youngsters were spoken to also influenced how long and attentively the little ones listened to the sound recording.

The linguists found that the newborns can perceive differences in the way they speak as early as six months of age.

So whether we talk to them louder, quieter, higher or deeper.

Babies learn to speak better through baby language

Source: Unsplash.com/Picsea

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This finding is an important indicator of how babies learn and perceive language, explains the language psychologist Prof. Dr.

Nivedita Mani from the University of Göttingen:

This is important because children learn better when they pay more attention to a particular source.

So this fondness for baby language has the potential to have a major impact on their learning.

Prof. Dr.

Nivedita Mani, language psychologist at the University of Göttingen 

In other words: The Baby Talk can help the little ones to learn to speak better than when adults talk to them in their “normal”, comparatively more complex colloquial language.

Simply because more attention is paid to baby talk.

The scientists now want to continue researching how exactly this happens in babies.