UNESCO has proclaimed that on February 21, the International Mother Language Day. And why do we bring this celebration to the blog? Because the mother tongue is the first thing babies recognize, even since they are in the womb.
The mother's voice is detected by the baby around the 20th week of gestation, being the strongest stimulus she receives from outside. But not only the sound of his voice, but the language in which he speaks can be detected by the baby's brain from the six months of gestation.
Various studies have shown that the language experienced in the uterus is then recognized by the baby after birth. It is specifically the vowels of the mother tongue that the baby is able to recognize, and even if he has been exposed to two different languages is able to differentiate them, so he says that children are bilingual from the womb.
It is also believed that children cry in their mother's language because they recognize the sounds of the mother tongue and at birth they cry imitating that pattern.
The mother tongue is the first language learned, the language acquired naturally from the mother's womb. The language for which we are born with an inexplicable ability to perceive and learn it systematically and efficiently.
Because of the importance of the first language we perceive, even before birth, today we celebrate the International Mother Language Day.
