Does your baby cry in French or German?

The wail of a newborn may sound the same to the ears of sleep-deprived parents the world over, but according to scientists, that's not the case. Babies cry in the language their parents speak from the first days of life.

An international team of researchers said a study of 60 newborns suggested babies start to learn language in the womb, long before they utter their first coos or babbles and their wails can be distinguished according to the mother tongue.

French newborns tend to cry with a rising melody contour, while their German neighbors prefer a falling melody shape - patterns which the researchers said fit with characteristic differences between the two languages.

Kathleen Wermke of the University of Wuerzburg in Germany, who conducted the study with French and American colleagues, said it showed newborns are capable of producing different cry melodies and that they prefer melodies in the pattern of the language they heard in the womb.

Wermke's team recorded the cries of 60 healthy newborns, 30 born into French-speaking families and 30 born into German-speaking families, when they were three to five days old.

Their analysis, published in journal Current Biology, revealed clear differences in the shape of the newborns' cry melodies, based on their mother tongue.

Previous studies have shown that human fetuses can memorize sounds from the external world by the last three months of pregnancy and are particularly attuned to melodies in both music and language. Vocal imitation studies have also shown babies can match vowel sounds spoken by adults, but only from 12 weeks old.

Wermke's team said their research showed an extremely early impact of native language and confirmed that babies' cries are their first proper attempts to communicate specifically with their mothers.

"Newborns are probably highly motivated to imitate their mother's behaviour in order to attract her and....foster bonding," they wrote. "Because melody contour may be the only aspect of their mother's speech that newborns are able to imitate, this might explain why we found melody contour imitation at that early age."

Birth collapse Pc 'natural Death'

A police officer who collapsed in a hospital toilet while in labour with twins died of natural causes, a coroner has ruled.

Pc Sarah Underhill, 37, died on 5 October last year at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, after amniotic fluid from the womb entered her blood stream.

Pathologist Sebastian Lucas said her condition was "unpreventable".

Mrs Underhill's husband Richard had said doctors should have performed a Caesarean section sooner.

In summing up the case, Oxfordshire Coroner Nicholas Gardiner said: "The twins were successfully delivered but sadly [Mrs Underhill] went into a cardiac arrest from which she could not be retrieved."

'Sadly missed'

In a statement, Mrs Underhill's husband Richard thanked the coroner as well as staff at the John Radcliffe Hospital.

He described his wife as "a devoted daughter, caring sister and beautiful wife.

Richard Underhill said he and his wife had been "desperate" to have children

"It is truly heartbreaking that she will not go on to become the wonderful mother she would have been," he said. "She will be sadly missed."

Mr Underhill, 39, now cares for six-month-old twins Hannah and James at their home in Didcot, Oxfordshire.

"This was a very sad and distressing case," said Gill Walton, head of midwifery at Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals Trust

"Maternal deaths are rare in this country and this particular condition is exceptionally rare.

"Our thoughts are with Mrs Underhill's family and their twins."

Professor Andrew Shennan, who reviewed the case for the trust, said Mrs Underhill had died from causes unrelated to the pre-eclampsia for which she had been admitted.

"If she had not been an inpatient at the time of her collapse, it is likely that the babies would have died," he said.