No wonder learning a new language can be more difficult the older you get.  We were learning our individual languages before we were even born!  That’s what researchers revealed in a release today by Current Biology.

It seems that fetuses not only warm to the sound of mother’s voice as they gestate, they also are being programmed in the direct patterns inherent in certain languages.  By the time we are born, our dialect is determined.

Wermke’s team recorded and analyzed the cries of 60 healthy newborns, 30 born into French-speaking families and 30 born into German-speaking families, when they were three to five days old. That analysis revealed clear differences in the shape of the newborns’ cry melodies, based on their mother tongue.

Specifically, French newborns tend to cry with a rising melody contour, whereas German newborns seem to prefer a falling melody contour in their crying. Those patterns are consistent with characteristic differences between the two languages, Wermke said.