The Power of Motherese: How Infant-Directed Speech Supports Language Development?

Caregivers & parents often notice a distinct change in tone whilst communicating with infants and young children compared to adults.

Despite parents feeling self-conscious about this style of communication at times, the research emphasizes that “Motherese” offers immense benefits towards linguistic development throughout infancy & childhood.

What is Motherese?

This form of speaking, commonly known as “motherese” or infant-directed speech, is characterized by a high pitch, simpler vocabulary, sentence structure, and a slower tempo with exaggerated intonation.

Motherese can help infants learn the sounds within their language due to the high-pitched speech’s ability to pique the interest of younger age groups. This type of communication can assist in clarifying different speech sounds. Infants should recognize phonetics necessary to their native tongue before producing them on their own.

Main Benefits of Motherese

Motherese encompasses different advantages with more than just assisting babies & young kids to recognize language phonetics.

Studies exhibit that adult usage of motherese while communicating with those attempting another language grasps better comprehension. For this, simplifying your words and emphasizing key phrases allows easier assimilation for picking up new phrases and vocabulary words. This infant communication technique is especially useful within workplaces & classroom settings.

Apart from aiding sound recognition, incorporating motherese often makes it easier for young children to process and comprehend complex sentence structures without requiring them to construct the same style themselves. This simplified linguistic approach along with a slower pace, provides an opportunity for younger minds to grasp sentence meanings without expanding fully into complicated constructions.

Motherese at Early Stages

Incorporating adjustments in pronunciation while interacting with individuals throughout the early stages engraves itself as vital to overall success. Communication development observed in early stages works towards long-term growth. Even though adopting “motherese” may seem foreign at first, using it while conversing with young kids or individuals who are still learning the language can lead to positive results in their comprehension and diction skills.

Do not hesitate to use simpler words and tones when communicating as it could improve your child’s linguistic development.

If you’re stuck and unsure how to even use motherese, we suggest listening to a few Adam wa Mishmish songs and listening to certain intonations and ways that we pronounce the words in our songs. This will help inspire you to integrate musical speaking with your children or students. Adam Wa Mishmihs’s own Marketing Manager finds inspiration in the insects’ song (Listen to it HERE). The repetition, rhythm, and notes used in mentioning each insect can be imitated with other words to help with grasping the meaning and facilitate successful language learning. You can also sign up for Adam Wa Mishmish’s class in Jordan, in which we use motherese, playing time, and fun activities to help kids learn and love the Arabic language.