Opinion Parentese, it appears, is near-universal. It is a reminder of how much people have in common

Spare a thought for L L Zamenhof. In 1887, the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist created Esperanto, which he hoped would become the lingua franca for diplomacy — an “international auxiliary language”. Linguistic universalism, Zamenhof thought, was the key to ending war. As it turns out, even 135 years ago, there already existed a near-universal language. Baby talk.

Gurgling sounds, high-pitched coos, sing-song voices and simple tunes — it is difficult to think of “Parentese” (as baby talk is formally known) as being intelligible, let alone translatable. But in the broadest research on the subject — consisting of an analysis of 1,615 voice recordings from 410 parents on six continents, in 18 languages — the findings present a picture of the universal meaning in the nonsense. From Kerala to Kansas, there is a deep similarity in Parentese — in terms of the sounds, pitch and metre — and in every case, this is different from how adults talk to each other.

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It is easy to think of the findings as obvious. Babies, after all, are pretty similar across cultures. But the real import of the research is that they also have universal developmental needs. From helping with speech, to learning how to discern sounds, Parentese serves important evolutionary functions. But these functions — speech, in particular — are also the basis for social life and human development. In essence, the human abilities to learn, conceptualise and create — all the things that form culture and civilisation — start (at least in part) from the over-pronounced gibberish adults perform for infants. And while it can’t be used for such high-minded things as diplomacy and world peace, the near-universalism of Parentese does hold a lesson for all those who prefer to emphasise differences and prejudice over the fact that, for all their differences, all people coo at babies.