'hiya ickle pickle bubba!'

'Hiya ickle pickle bubba!'

'Well who is a beautiful bubba wubba', makes you feel a bit sick doesn't it? But in fact Child Directed speech has been shown to help child language development from the Stanford University; they say children need 'linguistic nutrition' for their development of language in the feature to 

support their needs. 

'New research from Stanford psychologists shows that by talking more to their toddler, parents help the child learn to process language more quickly, which accelerates vocabulary growth.'

Children need this silly talk from their mothers and other guardians to progress their language through their life and to grow up and understand the difference between 'doggy' and 'dog'.

Child directed speech aims to attract and hold the Childs attention, help break down the process of language into understandable chunks to the child and also make the conversation more predictable by referring to here-and-now.  

'The researchers also assessed children's efficiency in language processing, using a procedure designed by Fernald. Toddlers were shown two images – for example, a dog and a book – as they listened to a voice asking them to look at one of the pictures, while a video camera recorded the child's reaction.'

But not everybody agrees on this, it has been said that researchers ague the child directed speech doesn't directly help babies learn their language instead it helps parents to communicate with their children for example its rather social than educational. Also a child's language improves when in contact with an adult who speaks to them directly.

The features of child directed speech are that using phonology by separating phrases more distinctively, leaving long pauses between words, this is so the child can understand what is being said. Also a lot of repetition is used for example 'who is that?'

Baby talk also shows lots of warm gestures to build a relationship with your child and to communicate with them in a way for their understanding. A use of commands, tag questions and inflections are also used to communicate. The use of personal names such as 'mummy' is used so the child can associate to them on a personal level. The uses of repetitive sentences are used such as 'this is a...' so they learn new objects and animals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSCXMfeo74Q

The video above shows some of the examples mentioned.

So maybe all that baby talk is for some reason or maybe it's not everybody has their own opinion. But talking to your child in this way may have an impact on how they grow up and understand things when they are older.

Beth Carling.