We've all been there – you meet an adorable baby and immediately find yourself using an exaggerated, high-pitched, singsong voice. Now, a study has revealed that this'baby talk' is the same in every language, with people around the world transforming their voices when they speak to infants. Researchers from the University of York and Aarhus University studied baby talk across 36 languages and found similarities in pitch, melody, and articulation rates. Christopher Cox, who led the study, said: 'We use a higher pitch, more melodious phrases, and a slower articulation rate when talking to infants compared to how we talk to adults, and this appears to be the same across most languages.' We've all been there – you meet an adorable baby and immediately find yourself using an exaggerated, high-pitched singsong voice Baby talk is a style of speech employed by adults when talking to an infant.

It's something that many parents do without thinking, but if you use'baby talk' with your child, you may unknowingly be helping them to learn. A new study has revealed that babies really do prefer baby talk, and pay more attention to its exaggerated, sing-song tones. While previous research has shown that monolingual babies prefer baby talk, the new study found that it is also the case for babies exposed to two languages. Not only is it good to speak baby talk to engage an infant and help them learn, parents can use baby talk in two languages without making their offspring confused, the research reveals. Babies will pay more attention to baby talk than regular speech, regardless of which languages they're used to hearing, according to a study by UCLA's Language Acquisition Lab and 16 other labs around the world Baby talk is a certain style of speech employed by adults when talking to an infant.

Like all new parents, I must sound like a kook when I babble along with my 9-month-old daughter. That's okay: It delights her. I sometimes ask her what she might mean as she offers some apparently affirming utterance and looks at me with her big blue eyes: Oh, you like it when daddy lifts you? Her vocalizations--the squeals and whoas and yah-wahs--can have surprising verve and a kind of ecological significance. My daughter's noises, scientists say, "catalyze" me to produce "simplified, more easily learnable language."

Mothers across the globe subconsciously change the tone of their voice when they talk to their baby to help them learn, a new study found. Regardless of the language spoken, all mothers use a universal'motherese' or'baby talk' when they address to their infants, which is an exaggerated and somewhat musical form of speech. While it may sound silly to adults, studies show it plays an important role in language learning, engaging infants' emotions and highlighting the structure of language to help babies decode the puzzle of syllables and sentences. Now Princeton University researchers have found another unique feature of the way mothers talk to their babies, claiming they shift the timbre of their voice in a specific way. A mother shifts the timbre, which is defined as the quality of a sound, in her voice so her newborn can recognize and pay attention to her from birth, the researchers explained, adding that the same could be true for fathers.