Marginalium

Babies learn to talk in the womb. Highlights:

When babies are born, they cry in the accent of their mother tongue

Some restless infants don’t wait for birth to let out their first cry. They cry in the womb, a rare but well-documented phenomenon called vagitus uterinus

Language learning begins in the womb … Exposure to speech in the womb leads to lasting changes in the brain, increasing the newborns’ sensitivity to previously heard languages … newborns had not just memorised … [these elements of speech] … they were actively moving air through their vocal cords and controlling the movements of their mouth to mimic this … Babies are communicating as soon as they are born, and these abilities are developing in the nine months before birth.