Studies show that newborns develop language skills within hours of birth In contrast to the traditional view of newborns, passively lying around and crying, a recent study published in Nature Human Behaviour established that newborns start soaking up and tuning into the specifics of the world around them within hours, including the specific languages that they’ll speak. Babies are known to start learning language by hearing speech even when they’re in the womb, but can’t hear the detail as it’s muffled, as if underwater. The study, with international contributors including Gary Oppenheim...