Why Babble Sounds Different Across Languages
(and what that means for your baby’s speech development)
Meet Cara Tyrrell, M.Ed, A Pediatric Speech Therapist
Cara Tyrrell, M.Ed., is a Vermont-based early childhood educator, parent educator, and speaker. She holds bachelor’s degrees in American Sign Language (ASL) and Linguistics and a master’s degree in education. Cara built the Collaborative Parenting Methodology™, a birth-to-five science-and-soul framework that helps parents understand how intentional language builds connection and confidence in kids. She also hosts the Transforming the Toddler Years podcast, teaching adults how to “talk to kids before they can talk back” and turn everyday moments into opportunities for growth.
Cara Tyrrell’s approach blends aspects of neuroscience with everyday parenting realities: every sound your baby makes helps build the path toward real language. Recognizing why babbling sounds different across linguistic environments helps parents understand that early language isn’t just about what words come out, but about what your child’s brain is tuning into at different stages of their development.
Is Babbling a Good Sign?
Babbling is a healthy sign of speech development for your baby. In fact, most of your child’s speech signs will begin through sound vocalizations, early body movements, and nonverbal expressions.
“Only seven percent of our meaning-based comprehensive communication is what actually comes out of our mouth. The other ninety-three percent is nonverbal body language, facial expression, tone, and intonation.”- Cara Tyrell.
Babbling typically begins around 4 to 6 months of age when babies start to experiment with sounds they hear in their world.
Cara explains that babbling is not random noise. Babies aren’t making meaningless sounds , they are practicing phonemes. Phonemes are the smallest units of sound in a language; the sounds that become the building blocks of spoken words, and babbling plays a huge part in this.
“Babbling is practicing phonemes.” Cara says.
She emphasizes that before babies ever say real words, they are rehearsing these sound patterns that are literally training their mouths and brains to produce language. This rehearsal is one of the early markers of healthy language development, so the answer to “is babbling a good sign?” is unequivocally yes. If your baby is babbling, they’re doing the work their brain and mouth need to do before they talk.
Why Babble Sounds Different in Different Languages
Infants and toddlers are exceptionally skilled as a blank language state. At birth, babies are capable of producing every sound used in all languages on Earth. That includes sounds that adults in a given community never use. Every phoneme. All of them.
“Infants and toddlers are brilliant at it because they can’t talk yet. So they’re using all of those communication strategies…..Babies are born with the ability to produce, to orate all of them”
At birth, babies are capable of producing every sound used in all languages on Earth. That includes sounds that adults in a given community never use. Every phoneme. All of them.
That ability doesn’t last forever. As babies are exposed to the language or languages around them, their brains begin to prune. This means they gradually stop practicing sounds they don’t need and focus only on the sounds that matter for the language(s) they hear every day.
“Over the course of their first year of life… by 12 months old, they have pruned… away and disregarded all the other ones they don’t need.”
Babble sounds different from country to country because:
A baby raised in an English-speaking home might babble more “ba” and “da” sounds.
A baby raised in a tonal language environment might vary pitch and rhythm earlier.
A baby hearing French, Arabic, Spanish, or Mandarin will unconsciously zero in on the phonemes used in those languages.
Babbling isn’t a simple imitation of the sounds they hear, it’s also neural rehearsal. Babies are mentally organizing their sound landscape and aligning their vocal experiments with the patterns they’re exposed to most.
Is This a Normal Part of Development?
Yes, babbling is functional practice toward talking.
Babbling or “baby talk” is not an unhealthy speech habit. Hearing consistent babbling as your baby approaches 6 months is a reassuring sign that receptive and early expressive language is developing.
What Parents Should Know about Baby Talk
In a brief summary of Cara’s insights on babbling she discusses how:
Babbling is productive early language work that is essential for speech development.
Because babies can initially produce all human phonemes, the sounds they use naturally narrow toward the ones they hear most often.
When a baby’s babble sounds different from another baby’s, that’s expected — not problematic, because their brain is specializing in their language environment.
If your baby is babbling regularly by 6 months, that is generally a positive sign of development.
Babbling is a beautiful window into your baby’s brain at work where you can observe the earliest point of building a sound system before they build their vocabulary.
