Some German biologists are claiming that babies cry in different 'accents' depending on the native language of their mother. This has led the researchers to hypothesise that babies begin to pick up language before they are born. Here is an informative and erudite article from today's Times, and here is a rather less erudite one from the Daily Mail entitled Ee wah gum! Babies cry with regional accents. The German study compared the crying of French and German infants. The Daily Mail has its own hypothesis, namely that British babies born in different regions of the country to parents speaking different dialects and with different accents, will also have their own distinctive crying patterns.
Not all linguists are convinced by the study, which showed that French babies' cries built up from a low to a higher pitch, while German infants' cries were the other way around, matching the intonation rhythm of the French and German languages.
Ee wah gum, by the way, is meant to be a pun on the northern dialect phrase ee bah gum, which means 'golly!' or 'well I never!'. It's supposed to be a Yorkshire phrase but I went to university in Leeds in Yorkshire and can't remember ever hearing anyone say it. The phrase by gum is in the OED. Gum is a corruption of God, as is the interjection golly.
