From the Mouths of Babes

Dawn and I have joked that when Olivia babbles it sounds a lot like she's speaking Chinese. Well, I just read an article at Times Online suggesting that might actually be the case:

Newborn babies mimic the intonation of their native tongue when they cry, indicating that they begin to pick up the first elements of language in the womb, a study suggests.

Scientists were already aware that babies are able to recognise certain sounds from birth, such as their parents' voices, but they believed that infants were only able to imitate them from the age of about 12 weeks.

Now research carried out in Germany suggests that babies develop a capacity for language much earlier than was previously thought. "Our study shows the importance of crying for seeding language development," said Professor Kathleen Wermke, who led the research at the University of Würzburg.

We didn't meet Olivia until she was one, which means she had already been learning for about a year and nine months. She's a bright kid, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if she really is speaking Chinese!