Different first sounds in different languages?

[marsup]

Are these sort of 'universal', or do babies make different sorts of sounds in different languages? I know that where in English we say a baby 'coos', in French a baby says 'Areuh' (sp?). We've been speaking French to our baby and he did, bizarrely, start out by saying 'Areuh'. Now he also says 'Egeuh' and 'Abuh' and has started singing 'Hou, hou' to himself (with a look of intense concentration), which is particularly un-French as they don't say H. NB he is 6 months old, in case anyone thought he was a retarded 7yr old!

Hi Marsup. In the very dim recesses of my memory (dimmer than a dimmer switch) there's a theory that babies are supposed to make a pretty universal set of noises when first babbling. But they prefer the sounds of the language spoken by their parents to any other, apparently. And eventually their babbling narrows to those sounds or something like that.
I'm probably wrong though!

I think that aa EDDM said babies start out by making the sames sounds and after a few months (sorry can't remember exactly when) they start making language specific noises.

Marsup, my dd also started with areuh, also francophones, so it must be a French sound... You've just reminded me, we had a phase of long series of areuh, it's a lovely memory I even recorded some. It will be interesting to see if your ds will go through a similar phase.

When DD1 was at this stage we always said she spoke Swedish - like the Swedish chef on the Muppets? - eegle ergle oogle, that kind of thing.

The word for daddy in most (I think) languages is a variant of dada, papa or abba - so those tend to be the first "positive" sounds and the wise mamas all say "the baby said daddy!"

I always told people that dd was speaking Chinese, as that's what her babbling sounded like to me! (I told Spanish children she was speaking English).

But there have been several studies and babies do tend to make the same or similar sounds, whichever language they have been exposed to. In particular they tend to say voiced plosive consonants first (p,g,b,d) and then the nasal ones (n,m). However there are exceptions - dd's first consonant was a kind of gurgly g sound which does occur in some languages, but not English or Spanish. (am I getting boring yet? )

Janh is right - nursery words for dad and mum are almost universally dada,papa etc or something similar to mama.

As to vowels I don't know. Probably learned something about it at university but I've forgotten. But I have noticed that dd is better at saying all the vowels at the front of the mouth and not the back - she says the french u (as in "tu" ) sound rather than english oo for words like "shoe"

Babies start out making all sounds. By the time they're making noises they're already losing the ability to tell apart sounds that their language doesn't use, but they still work through the whole range, and then some. My 4 month old appears to have given up Arabic in favor of Quechua (no more back of the throat g's, now we have proper trills). Then again, I'm pretty certain no language uses raspberries or fake coughs, two of her favorite new noises.

As for the different words for what they say first, chickens and dogs say different things in French and English, too.

Ooops, I said p was one of the first sounds. I don't think it is.

CG - babies can distinguish all sounds at first - they can't make them.

And I love Spanish animal sounds. Dd's learning them at nursery, and the nursery staff think the idea of a dog saying "woof woof" (or "uff uff" as dd says) is halarious. Dogs obviously say "wow wow".

Isn't there a Greek play (Aristophanes?) where the frogs say 'brekke ke kex, koax, koax' (or words to that effect)?

I'm surprised that the plosives come first, SenoraPostrophe - I'd somehow have expected them to be harder. But this definitely fits in with 'abuh, ageuh'. I'll prepare myself pychologically for the shock of 'papa' coming before 'maman' (rather likely anyway given my ds's wide-eyed adoration of dh).

Come to think of it, are there any languages that use raspberry noises?

SenoraPostrophe, in Greece dogs say guv guv !

In Romanian, dogs say "ham ham!"

In Italy dogs say BAU BAU!

Dutch cows say Boo not Moo, and Korean dogs say something very different like gang gang (but I can't remember - any Korean speakers out there?)

Despite the fact that dada/papa/aba are supposed to be very early sounds my ds has never said papa until this month, he is now 21 months! Instead he called his papa "mama" quite clearly and deliberately, and he called me....well nothing really, and he still doesn't have a name for me, despite being able to say the names of all our friends....sigh...

Looking back over this thread I should have said g,d,b come bfore m and p - babies definitely usually say dada before mama, but I'm not sure about papa.

Tanzie - love the Romanian dog noise.

My favourite though is the cockerel noise - it's cici-li-ki in Spanish (and I think most European languages? ) but a student once told me what it was in Japanese - can't remember it but it was really weird.

Hello all, just joining in. My 3 month old's first noise was a very distinctive portuguese rr (like a french r but a bit juicier)! Still his favourite noise, apart from a very english goog. Portuguese roosters go ki kiri ki too ...

Hi y'all! My dd hears English and German and her first sounds sounded (?) like "areuh" as well.... I guess it is rather universal in the beginning!

Dutch cockerells say kukelekuuuu. My son loves it. But he doesn't distinguish between different birds yet. Every bird says duh-duh according to him (the translation is tok-tok, the sound Dutch chickens make, but it's very bilingual when pointing to a duck...)
And he calls his daddy mama as well, not papa yet. he is 16 months.

Tell you all these different animal sounds can be very confusing and I've had many a discussion with my then 3 year old ds and now my 2.9 year old dd is starting too about what the right noise is for the animal in question. e.g. 'no, frogs don't say quack they say ribbit and ducks say quack'. Me 'no no no' that's in English, in Dutch they both say quack. And geese always confuse me, although very popular in English children's books I do not remember ever encountering them in Dutch animal books and therefore I have no idea what sound they are supposed to make! What a terrible mum I am hey.
Oh and Steppemum I know exactly what you mean with not havinb a name. I used to test my lo's all the time when they were little, but when I pointed at pictures of me they just had no idea as to what that person was called, resulting in an equally big sigh as yours from my side, but now they've finally cracked it and I'm mama! (Or for my 5 year old 'oh maaamaaa' in semi-teenage voice, followed by leave me allone, don't hug me, kiss me,...)

dear Marsup,
Have their been any developments in your son's speech?
best,
Milius