What a Bird Brain

Image of baby looking as though he may babble

Is this baby going to make a babbling sound?

Do you remember your first word? Odds are it was not a word such as "cortex" or "motorcycle."

Most early human sounds are babbles, such as "da da" or "ga ga." And, just like us, it turns out the first language sounds made by song birds are unstructured babble as well!

Created with CAST's UDL Book Builder
CAST would like to thank Texthelp Inc. for use of the SpeechStream toolbar

Often babble is a way for a baby or a bird to begin to practice making the basic sounds of a language.

Listen

Have you ever tried to learn another language? Do you remember the steps you took to try to learn the different sounds of that language, especially if it was a language very different from English?

Listen

Select this then click anywhere in the book to start reading text Speak the current selection Stops speech playback Double-click a word in the book and click this icon to translate the word into Spanish