6 Minute English / How babies learn to talk

Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript.

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I m Phil.

And I m Georgie. For most parents, their baby s first word is a special moment. This happens after an early stage of language development called babble, when babies start making simple sounds like "ga" or "ma".

Babies have to learn to use their mouth muscles to make specific sounds. They experiment with different sounds and mouth shapes. So, what exactly is happening when babies start learning to speak? What do you think, Georgie?

Well, Phil, I'm no expert, but I imagine they watch the adults around them and kind of copy and imitate what they do. What do you think?

I definitely think that's what my children did when they were learning to speak. Well, let s compare our ideas with those of an expert - Professor Julian Pine from Liverpool University, speaking here on BBC Radio 4, and he lists the skills that babies develop in order to speak:

Professor Julian PineWell, one of the first things the child's got to do is, they've got to break down the speech stream into words. Then they've got to link the words to the things that they refer to in the environment, so they've got to learn what the words mean. [Right].

In this programme, we ll discover how babies learn to speak, and, as usual, we ll learn some useful new vocabulary. And on the subject of words, remember you can find a list of this programme s vocabulary on our website, bbclearningenglish.com. Some people find it helpful to study the vocabulary before listening.

And another thing to do before listening is ask my question, Georgie. We ve mentioned the babbling noises that babies make when learning to speak, but at what age does this usually start? Is it:

a) around 6 months old?b) around 9 months old? or,c) around 1 year old?