Understanding baby babble

Communicating (continued)
About a month after the babbling starts, babies begin experimenting with slightly more complex sounds, using two syllables like ma-ma, da-da, and bye-bye. Although they may not use them appropriately, the words begin to stand out more from the stream of babbling. By about eight or nine months of age, babies begin to understand the word No, a word that will come back to haunt you a few months from now. They understand more complex speech, too, although they cannot yet reproduce it. A nine-month-old can point to the family pet when you ask, "Where's the doggie?" He is also learning to use sound to get his parent's attention. He begins to mix combinations of very different sounds and may use inflection in his voice remarkably like real speech.

Then close to the first birthday, you experience that moment you've been waiting for -- the first word. It may not be as clear a sound as you might have expected. It may not sound like the real word, but if he uses it time after time to describe the same thing, it is a word. While your baby may use the word consistently, he may see no point in confining a perfectly good word to just one meaning. He could use the same word to describe two or three objects, or apply several names to one object.

Researchers identify the first word as a sound that the child uses consistently to refer to a person or object and that he uses in an appropriate way. These early words are almost always "labels" for things around him -- people, pets, favourite toys. Within a couple of months either side of his first birthday, your baby may add two or three more two-syllable words, such as na-na for banana and buh-buh for baby. Respond when your baby uses these words and repeat them back -- the right way -- as part of your conversation. If your baby says buh-buh, you might answer, "Yes, look at the baby!" This repeated naming of people and objects helps him sort out what the words stand for, even if he can't say them yet.

Talking directly to your child and holding his attention as you speak also helps him develop his imitative abilities and his language skills. This kind of human interactive language is the only effective way of learning language; passive listening to radio or TV does not help a child develop the neural networks that are essential to language development.

While children might utter only a few words, their understanding of words is advancing at a great pace. Take the opportunity to talk about what your baby is looking at and what appears to interest him. As with all aspects of development, don't be alarmed if your child doesn't speak as much or as often as some children -- they all progress at their own speed and their language accomplishments may vary by a year or more. But by twelve months, your baby may say eight or ten words, including his own name.

Forget the flash cards
A popular theory of some years ago was that a parent could speed up a child's comprehension and encourage other early reading skills by using vocabulary flash cards as soon as the baby could sit up and focus. The idea has since been discounted by most linguists as a waste of time. Babies don't learn language out of context by memorizing words one at a time; they learn language as part of their play and their interactions with others.

Parents help babies learn words and how they work together in sentences and questions by modelling how language works -- in their daily conversational exchanges between themselves or with the baby. If parents are sensitive to the baby's needs and surround him with purposeful language just slightly ahead of his ability, they "pull" him along more quickly than any set of vocabulary flash cards.