Why reading nursery rhymes and singing to babies may help them to learn language

• Phonetic information – the smallest sound elements of speech – may not be the basis of language learning in babies as previously thought
• Babies don’t begin to process phonetic information reliably until seven months old – which researchers say is too late to form the foundation of language
• Instead, babies learn from rhythmic information – the changing emphasis of syllables in speech – which unlike phonetic information, can be heard in the womb