Long before they’re??making their?linguistic?debut, babies are watching, listening, processing, their little brains working furiously to make sense of the world.
小寶寶開口發(fā)出第一個音之前，他們就一直在觀察傾聽、處理信息，他們的小腦袋在瘋狂運作以搞懂這個世界。

But new research shows that they’re participating. From the moment they’re born, babies are, in their own way, communicating in the language of their families: Even before they have words, they have accents.
但新的一項研究顯示，小寶寶們在參與。從出生的那一刻，小寶寶在用他們自己的方式、自己的語系來交流。他們能用語言表達(dá)之前，就已經(jīng)有了語調(diào)。

In a pair of studies led by Kathleen Wermke, who runs the Center for Pre-speech Development and Developmental Disorders at the University of Würzburg in Germany, researchers ran acoustical analyses on more than 6,000 cries, collected from infants during their first week of life.
凱瑟琳烏木克管理德國維爾茨堡大學(xué)管理語前發(fā)育和發(fā)育障礙中心，帶領(lǐng)研究人員做了一組實驗，收錄了超過6000多例出生一周的新生兒的哭聲，做了聲音分析。

In the first, published in the Journal of Voice, they focused on babies born to German and Mandarin-speaking Chinese families. In the second, published in Speech, Language and Hearing, they compared the cries of German babies to those of babies from Nso families in Cameroon, who speak Lamnso.
第一個研究發(fā)表在《聲音期刊》上，關(guān)注出生在德語與普通話的家庭的嬰兒。第二個研究發(fā)布在《話語、語言和聽覺》上，比較了德國嬰兒和喀麥隆尼索家庭里說林姆索語言的孩子。

Unlike German (and English), both Mandarin and Lamnso are both tonal languages, in which a single combination of sounds can create multiple words; the meaning of a spoken word changes depending on the pitch the speaker uses.
不像德語（和英語），普通話和林姆索都是聲調(diào)語言，幾個音的組合就可以創(chuàng)造出多個詞，說的詞語意義的轉(zhuǎn)化取決于說話的音高。

Accordingly, the Chinese and Nso babies both cried more melodically than their German counterparts: their pitches reached higher highs and lower lows, and their cries also fluctuated in pitch more quickly.
同樣，中國和尼索的嬰兒比起德國的嬰兒來說，哭起來更具韻律：其音高可以達(dá)到至高和極低，哭聲音高起伏速率也快。

Together, the two studies suggest that babies are learning the nuances of speech even before they’re born, absorbing information about pitch from their mothers while still in the womb.
合起來看，兩研究表明小寶寶在出生前就學(xué)會了語言的細(xì)微差別，還在子宮里就跟媽媽吸收了音高方面的訊息。

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