We taught our babies the sign language for “eat” and that made things a lot easier for everyone.
Comment on Curious 🤔
stray@pawb.social 4 days ago
Because people learn to understand language much faster than being able to produce it, both in terms of formulation and pronunciation. For babies in particular, they struggle with the fine motor skills required to produce sounds reliably. Babies can learn to produce nonverbal communication faster than vocal language because it’s easier in terms of bodily control.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
Jack@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
I think “mama”, “papa”, and “baba” are also some of the easiest things for human babies to say.
backalleycoyote@lemmy.today 4 days ago
They are. Mama/dada/papa/nana or similar sounds made with the lips or tongue against the gums are near universal terms for parents across languages because that’s just easy sounds for babies to make early on. We just roll with it and adopted their “words” as the foundation of assigning meanings to a specific sound.