During the first 6 months of life, a baby’s vocalisations are dominated by crying, cooing, and laughter, which have limited value as a mean of communication.

0 – 2 months: Discomfort sounds, crying in particular.

A new-born baby is aware of sounds and noises. You may notice your baby move their arms and legs to the sound of your voice. When people talk to babies they often use a higher tone of voice, repeat what they say, and use simple short sentences. This kind of speech catches babies’ attention as they listen to the sounds and words. Even from a very early age babies will try to copy your mouth movements when you talk to them.

2 - 3 months: Noises indicating pleasure, such as burbling or cooing. Babies may enjoy listening to sounds, voices and their own cooing.

Three month old infants can distinguish phonemes (units of sounds, e.g. ‘boy’ has three phonemes: /b/ + /ɔ/ + /j/) from all the world’s languages, including phonemes that they do not hear in their environment. In contrast, adults cannot readily discriminate phonemes that are not used in their native language. Actually, neither can 1-year-old children, as this curious ability disappears by the time children reach 12 months of age.

4 – 9 months: You will notice cooing sounds change to babbling (repetitive consonant vowel combinations), for example, ‘dadadadada’. At 4–5 months they may start to laugh and squeal. Between 4 months and 1 year, your baby will try making many different sounds.

Talking to babies about what you are doing, naming things and talking about what they are doing helps them learn about their world and learn to speak.

Progress toward understanding words also occurs during the first year. By 7.5 months, infants begin to recognise common word forms, and by 8 months many show the primitive first signs of understanding the meanings of familiar words. “Na-na!”

Babbling gradually becomes more complex and increasingly resembles the language spoken by people in their environment. Babbling last until around 18 months, continuing even after children utter their first words.

9 – 18 months: Exploring phonemes (units of sounds). Also, exploring similar-sounding noises, such as ‘mamamama’ and ‘babababa’. Babies now experiment with the different ways that sounds can be put together. They also start building up a ‘phoneme system’, which they will use later when making words. Their first words start to appear.

At 1 year they may be saying 2 or 3 words and repeating simple sounds. Babies will use a variety of tuneful sounds that resemble speech patterns. You may notice them starting to take turns waiting for you to speak, then babbling back. They will understand lots of words. Children understand what you say to them long before they can talk themselves.

They will also let you know what they want through gestures, for example, pointing and reaching out their arms to be picked up.

Most infants’ first words are similar in phonetic form and meaning - even in different languages. The initial words resemble the syllables that infants most often babble spontaneously. For example, dada, mama, and papa are names for parents in many languages because they consist of sounds that are easy to produce. “dada!” “mama!” “yaya!” “baba!” “papa!” “nana!”

MonthsCommunicationDetail 1-5Reflexive communication Vocalises randomly, coos, laughs, cries, engages in vocal play, discriminates language from non-language sounds BabblingVerbalises in response to speech of others; responses increasingly approximate human speech patterns First wordsUses words; typically to refer to objects.