The melodies of the cries newborn babies produce differ depending on their native language, a new study says. Apparently humans start to practice language skills right in the first days of their lives.

Babies learn about speech even earlier. Some three months before birth a fetus’ ear is developed enough to hear sounds, including mother’s voice, which probably explains why infants as young as one month seem to prefer being talked to in their native language.

However, developing speaking skills of their own takes some time outside of the womb. Some 4 months after birth, babies start babbling in their parents’ language or languages.

But a new study by Kathleen Wermke, of the University of Würzburg in Germany, says babies differ in how they cry just days after birth, and the difference reflects their native language patterns, reports Science magazine.

The researcher compared recordings of the cries of 30 French and 30 German babies between 2 and 5 days old. French babies tended to produce cries with a rising melody contour, while Germans more often cried falling cries. These patterns are typical for French and German language respectively.

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Wermke says the findings indicate that infants’ cries are precursors of the sentences they’ll be saying in several years: "Why should a baby wait for 4, 5 or 6 months before starting this language development?"

The next step, the researcher says, is to compare cries from other language backgrounds, like Chinese or Japanese. It would be also interesting to study cries of hearing-impaired babies to see how they differ.