According to an extremely interesting research paper, published online in the November 5 edition of Current Biology, the cries of infants, even when they are barely three days old, clearly indicate the language spoken by their parents.

As per the researchers, the ‘melodic patterns’ that the newborn babies cry in clearly reflect the sounds of the conversations that their parents engaged in during the time these babies were in the womb.

Elaborating on the findings, study researcher, Kathleen Wermke - a medical anthropologist of the University of Würzburg in Germany – said that experts are already aware that parental voices, particularly that of the mother, are perceived in utero. These sounds are memorized by the babies in the womb, just they way other sounds, like simple musical melodies are memorized.

Wermke further said that since the babies, in the last months of their fetal life, can hear the language their mothers or other adults in the surroundings are conversing in. Upon their birth, they then re-create the memorized mother-tongue patterns in a few of their cries.

Noting that the “surrounding language” apparently affects the infants’ sound production much earlier than previously contemplated by the researchers, Wermke said: “Our data support the idea that human infants’ crying is important for seeding language development. Melody lies at the roots of both the development of spoken language and music.”