Question: Hi Tim. Why did my babie cousine learn to say 'dada' before she said 'muma' when she spent far more time with her mum?

Tim Fosker answered on 15 Jun 2011:

Hi @kaiiak

Thanks for a fantastic question! Quite a lot of babies learn to say dada before muma, so your baby cousin is not alone in this. There are a couple of reasons for this, one is that if your cousin spends more time with her mum, she is more likely to hear phrases like “when is daddy coming home?” or “where’s dada?” than she is to hear phases with mummy in them. People generally take about others to babies and not about themselves. The other more important reason is that a ‘d’ sound is easier to say than a ‘m’ sound. ‘dada’ is an extension of what we call ‘reduplicated babbling’ (when a baby repeats the same syllables over and over again), so even when a baby does learn muma they are more likely to say mama or mumu than muma to begin with.

I hope that answered your question.