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Infant-directed speech

The first documented use of the word baby-talk, according to the oxford English dictionary was in 1836. Motherese and parentese are more precise terms than baby talk. When babies are first born speaking is an important part in the bonding process between parent and child, this was researched found by Rima Shore. Infants pay more attention when parents use infant direct language. This includes slow and repetitive tones that would be used in normal conversation. This is shown in other languages as well as English. Further research has shown that infant directed speech may contribute to the infant's attention, their phonetic boundaries and will show positive and negative emotions. All round, the more expressive the infant directed speech is the more likely they are to respond well to this method and the better they will become at communicating.

Baby language will often involve shortening and simplifying words, but also utterances. It is known that parents will create words like 'wa-wa' for water, 'num-num' for a meal, 'beddy bye' for bed time or 'ba-ba' for bottle. This can involve family member's names, animals and some non verbal utterances such as' goo-goo-ga-ga'. This in some research has shown to affect the Childs vocabulary as they grow older. However, surely education in schools may vary their vocab and strengthen it. Are children really remembering their language from such an early age of let's say, 18 months? Parents are just creating words by logical meanings and using those nonverbal sounds to just fit speech together for a child.

For an infant English pronunciation can be mistaken and differenced in many ways. For example consonants like /l/ into /w/ as lolly to wolly or widdo from little. Other common ones are /v/ as /b/ and /ð/ or /t/ as /d/. It is a type of eye dialect which is the use of non-standard spelling for speech to bring attention to pronunciation. This term was originally coined by George P. Krapp to refer to literary technique of using non-standard spelling that implies pronunciation of the given word that is actually standard e.g. 'wimm' for women. This sort of speech can be referred to as dialectal, foreign or uneducated. Babies when they first start to talk do sound like they have a speech problem as they get mixed up with the consonants which are normally outgrown by 5-6. However some children struggle still with speech impairment and will go on in the future to have speech therapy. Something interesting to think about too, is an English infant may elongate vowels such as kitty to 'kiiiiitty'. For a Dutch infant they know that elongated vowels refer to different words.

Infant directed speech will include higher pitch, long vowels, pauses between phonemes and this is all done in order for the child to process what they are learning and to be able to link the words in sentences. Every child does it, and every child will develop their own individual style of speaking, a strong idiolect. But should kids be allowed to be kids? Recent studies have shown that children in schools have not been pronouncing words in Standard English manner. When researching this on the internet I came across an article written by 'NEWS' about children in Essex being given elocution lessons. Teachers have said that writing and spelling has improved since the lessons were brought in. Essex has had bad media in the past for the way they pronounce, but surely, that contributes to an individual? Speech starts as a baby and only more research by professionals can be done in order to reveal if it really does affect how we spell, pronounce and write in English.

Imahn Szabo