Months 6–9: Building Language Before Words

Your baby has been communicating with you since the day she was born — through cries, coos, smiles, and searching eyes. But somewhere around six months, something shifts. She is no longer just expressing how she feels. She is beginning to share what she notices. She is discovering that communication is not a solo act but a collaboration — a way of connecting her mind to yours around the things they both find interesting. This chapter covers the invisible architecture of language that your baby is building right now, months before she says her first word: joint attention, the babbling explosion, and the surprisingly powerful things you can do every day to support it all.

The Dog on the Sidewalk

You are out for a walk with your seven-month-old on your hip. A dog trots past on the sidewalk. Your baby stiffens with interest, her eyes locked on it. Then she does something new — something she was not doing a month or two ago. She looks at the dog, then turns to look at you, then looks back at the dog. Her expression is unmistakable: Are you seeing this?

That small triangle — baby, parent, dog — is one of the most important developments in your child's first year. She is not just looking at the dog. She is checking whether you are looking at the dog too. She wants to share the experience with you. In that moment, she is doing something that no other species on the planet does as readily and as early as human infants do: she is engaging in joint attention, and it is the foundation on which all language will be built.[^1]

What Language Is Before Words

When most people think about language development, they think about first words. When will she say "mama"? When will she say "dog"? But by the time your baby produces her first recognizable word — typically sometime between nine and fourteen months — she will have already spent months building an elaborate, invisible language system. The word is just the tip showing above the surface.

She Understands More Than She Can Say

One of the most important things to know about infant language is that comprehension develops far ahead of production.[^2] Your baby understands words and phrases long before she can say any of them. By nine months, most babies respond to their own name — the CDC lists this as a social-emotional milestone for that age.[^3] Over the next few months, she will begin to understand "no," recognize the names of familiar people and objects, and follow simple requests like "give me the ball" — all before she can produce more than a handful of sounds that resemble words.

Think of it like being dropped into a foreign country. During your first weeks, you understand far more than you can say. You recognize greetings, you pick up on tone, you learn the words for the things you encounter every day — food, water, thank you — long before you can string together a sentence. Your baby is in exactly this position, except she is doing it on a grander scale: she is learning the entire structure of human communication from scratch.

Language Is Not Just Words

Before your baby says a single word, she is already communicating through a growing repertoire of non-verbal signals. She lifts her arms to be picked up — a gesture the CDC lists as a nine-month milestone.[^3] She reaches toward objects while looking at you to see if you will help. Over the coming weeks, she will begin pointing at things, waving, and shaking her head.

These gestures are not pre-language in the sense of being lesser than words. They are language — they serve the same communicative functions that words will later serve. When your baby reaches toward a cup while looking at you, she is doing a version of what she will eventually do when she says "cup": she is directing your attention to something and expecting you to respond. The AAP notes that babies in this age range begin nonverbal communication through gestures, crawling toward desired objects, and imitating actions they observe during conversations.[^4]

Joint Attention: The Triangle of Communication

That moment on the sidewalk — baby looks at dog, baby looks at you, baby looks at dog again — has a name in developmental psychology: joint attention. And it is far more significant than it appears.

What It Is

Joint attention is the shared focus of two people on the same object or event, with both parties aware that the other is paying attention to it.[^1] The developmental psychologist Michael Tomasello, who has studied this extensively, emphasizes that joint attention is not merely two people happening to look at the same thing at the same time. It requires something more: each person must be aware that the other person is also attending to it.[^1] It is attention that is, in a real sense, shared.

This may sound abstract, but you can see it in action every day with your baby. When she holds up a toy and looks at you, she is not just playing with the toy — she is showing it to you. When she follows your pointed finger to look at a bird in a tree, she is not just tracking your hand — she is understanding that your gesture is meant to direct her attention somewhere.

flowchart TD
    A["Baby"] -- "looks at" --> C["Object\n(dog, toy, book)"]
    B["Parent"] -- "looks at" --> C
    A -- "checks that\nyou see it too" --> B
    B -- "responds" --> A

This triangle — baby, parent, and a shared point of interest — is the basic structure of all communication. Every conversation you will ever have with your child, from "look at the doggy" to "how was your day at school," rests on this three-way foundation: two minds, attending to a shared topic, aware of each other's attention.

When It Develops

Joint attention emerges gradually between six and twelve months.[^1] The sequence typically looks like this:

• Around 6-7 months: Your baby begins to follow your gaze. If you look at something, she looks in the same general direction. She may not find the exact object you are looking at, but she orients herself toward it.
• Around 8 months: She begins to follow your pointing gesture more reliably. She also starts to look back and forth between you and an object, as if to check whether you are sharing her experience.
• Around 9-12 months: She begins to initiate joint attention herself — pointing at things, holding objects up for you to see, vocalizing to get your attention and then directing it toward something. She is no longer just responding to your cues; she is actively inviting you into her experience.[^1]

Researchers distinguish between two types of joint attention: responding to joint attention (following someone else's gaze or point) and initiating joint attention (directing someone else's attention to something you find interesting). Both are critical. Responding is about receiving communication; initiating is about creating it. Together, they form the full loop of shared attention that makes language possible.

Why It Matters So Much

Research has consistently shown that joint attention in infancy predicts later language development. A baby's capacity for joint attention at twelve months is a predictor of how quickly she will acquire vocabulary in the months that follow.[^1] This makes intuitive sense: a baby who can share attention with a caregiver is a baby who is set up to learn what things are called. When you and your baby are both looking at a dog and you say "dog," she has every cue she needs to connect that sound to that animal. She sees where you are looking, she hears what you are saying, and she links the two.

Without joint attention, word learning is dramatically harder. If your baby is looking at a tree while you point at a dog and say "dog," the sound has no clear referent. Joint attention creates the conditions under which words can be learned — by ensuring that the baby and the speaker are focused on the same thing at the same time.[^1]

INFO

Joint attention is so fundamental to language development that its absence or delay is one of the early indicators that developmental specialists look for when screening for autism spectrum disorder. This does not mean that every baby who is slow to develop joint attention has autism — there is a wide range of normal variation. But it underscores just how central shared attention is to the human communication system.

The Babbling Explosion

While your baby is building the social scaffolding of language through joint attention, she is simultaneously working on the other side of the equation: sound. Between six and nine months, her vocalizations undergo a dramatic transformation. The coos and squeals of earlier months give way to something that sounds, unmistakably, like the beginnings of speech.

Stages of Babbling

Babbling develops in a predictable sequence, and each stage represents a genuine advance in your baby's control over her mouth, tongue, and vocal cords.[^5][^6]

Stage	Age Range	What It Sounds Like
Marginal babbling	~4-6 months	Single syllables: "ma," "ba," "ga." Vowel-like sounds mixed with occasional consonants.
Canonical (reduplicated) babbling	~6-9 months	Repeated syllables: "ba-ba-ba," "ma-ma-ma," "da-da-da." The same consonant-vowel combination over and over.
Variegated babbling	~9-10 months	Mixed syllables: "ba-da-ga," "ma-na-ba." Different consonant-vowel combinations strung together.
Conversational babbling (jargon)	~10-12 months	Babble with the rhythm, intonation, and pauses of real speech. Sounds like a foreign language you cannot quite place.

The big shift during this chapter's window — six to nine months — is the arrival of canonical babbling: those strings of repeated syllables that fill the house with "ba-ba-ba" and "da-da-da."[^5] This is not random noise. Your baby is systematically practicing the coordination of lips, tongue, jaw, and breath that speech requires. She is running experiments with her own vocal apparatus, just as she ran experiments with the mobile and the rattle in earlier months.

What Babbling Reveals

Babbling is not just practice — it is a window into your baby's developing language system. Here is what the patterns tell us:

She is imitating what she hears. Babies babble using the sounds of the language they are exposed to. A baby growing up in an English-speaking household will babble with English-like sounds; a baby hearing Mandarin will babble differently.[^6] Babies in multilingual households incorporate sounds from all the languages they hear, and this does not slow their babbling development.[^6]

She is narrowing her focus. At birth, your baby could distinguish the sounds of every language on earth — roughly 600 consonants and 200 vowels.[^7] She was a universal listener. But starting around six months, something remarkable happens: her brain begins to specialize. She becomes increasingly tuned to the sounds of her native language and less sensitive to sounds she does not hear regularly. This process, called perceptual narrowing, begins with vowels around six months and extends to consonants around ten to twelve months.[^7]

This might sound like a loss, but it is actually an optimization. By narrowing her perception, your baby is becoming an expert in the specific language she needs to learn. She is trading breadth for depth — tuning out the sounds that do not matter in her language environment so she can more efficiently process the ones that do. Research has shown that the timing and degree of this perceptual narrowing between six and twelve months is a predictor of later language learning progress.[^7]

Babbling predicts first words. Research has found that the age at which a baby starts producing canonical babbling predicts when she will say her first words.[^6] A baby who begins babbling early tends to produce first words earlier, and a baby whose babbling is delayed may produce first words later. This is because babbling is not a separate activity from speech — it is the foundation on which speech is built. The mouth movements, breath control, and sound patterns your baby practices in babbling are the same ones she will use when she produces her first real words.

TIP

When your baby babbles, babble back. If she says "ba-ba-ba," try saying "ba-ba-ba" right back to her, then pause and wait. You will often see her light up and try again — and you have just had a conversation. These imitation games build turn-taking skills, teach her that vocalizing gets a response, and encourage her to keep experimenting with sounds.[^6]

Parentese: The Voice Your Baby Is Designed to Hear

You have probably noticed that you talk differently to your baby than you talk to other adults. Your voice goes up in pitch. You stretch out your vowels. You slow down. You exaggerate your intonation, swooping up and down in ways that would sound absurd in a boardroom. You are not being silly. You are speaking parentese, and your baby's brain is wired to respond to it.

What Parentese Is (and Is Not)

Parentese is sometimes confused with "baby talk" — the goo-goo, ga-ga, nonsense-word style of speaking that adults sometimes use with infants. But they are different things. Parentese uses real words, real grammar, and complete sentences. What makes it distinctive is the delivery: higher pitch, slower tempo, and exaggerated vowel sounds.[^8] "Look at the DOG! Do you SEE the dog? He is SO big!" — said slowly, with wide eyes and a sing-song melody — is parentese.

Researchers at the University of Washington describe parentese as "a social hook for the baby brain." Its high pitch and slower tempo are socially engaging and invite the baby to respond.[^8] It is not a dumbing-down of language. It is an optimization — a way of packaging language in the format that infant brains are best equipped to process.

The Evidence

A study from the University of Washington tracked 48 families, some of whom received coaching on how to use parentese more frequently, while others did not. The results were striking: babies whose parents received parentese coaching produced words at nearly double the rate of the control group. By eighteen months, children in the coached group had an average vocabulary of about 100 words, compared to about 60 words in the control group.[^8]

The coaching did not teach parents new words or special techniques. It simply encouraged them to speak to their babies in parentese more often and to engage in more conversational turn-taking — more back-and-forth exchanges where the parent speaks, the baby babbles or vocalizes, and the parent responds. The increase in these conversational turns was the mechanism that drove the vocabulary gains.[^8]

WARNING

Parentese is effective because it is spoken to the baby in the context of interaction — not because it is simply heard by the baby. Background speech, such as a television playing in another room, does not provide the same benefit. Babies learn language from responsive, face-to-face interaction with people, not from passively overhearing speech.[^8]

What You Can Do Every Day

You do not need flashcards, language apps, or special curricula to build your baby's language foundation. The most powerful thing you can do is something you are probably already doing: talk to her, respond to her, and share the world with her. Here is how to do it with intention.

Narrate Your Day

Describe what you are doing as you do it. "Now I'm putting on your sock. This is your left foot. The sock is blue. There we go, all cozy." This running commentary — sometimes called sportscasting — bathes your baby in language that is connected to real, visible actions and objects. She hears the word "sock" while seeing and feeling a sock. She hears "foot" while you touch her foot. Every narrated moment is a vocabulary lesson embedded in real life.[^4]

You do not need to narrate every second. That would be exhausting, and your baby needs quiet time too. But when you are engaged with her — during diaper changes, meals, bath time, walks — let your words describe the shared experience.

Read Aloud

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends reading aloud to babies beginning at birth.[^9] At six to nine months, your baby will not understand the story, and that is perfectly fine. What she gets from the experience is the rhythm and melody of language, the association between words and pictures, and — most importantly — the closeness of sitting in your lap while you speak in warm, animated tones.

Choose books with large, colorful pictures. Board books are ideal because she will want to grab, chew, and bang them. Point at the pictures as you name them: "Look, a cat! The cat is sleeping." You are practicing joint attention every time you point at a picture and she follows your finger to look at it.[^9]

Do not worry about reading the words on the page exactly as written. At this age, the pictures are more important than the text. Point, name, describe. If she wants to turn the pages backward or spend three minutes staring at one picture, follow her lead. The goal is not finishing the book. The goal is sharing it.

Respond to Her Babbling

When your baby babbles, she is practicing speech — and she is watching to see if it works. Does making sounds get a response? Does anyone listen? When you respond to her babbling as if it were meaningful speech, you teach her that vocalizing is a way to connect with people.[^6]

The Hanen Centre, a research-based language development organization, recommends four strategies for responding to babbling:[^6]

1. Wait and pause. Give your baby space to initiate sounds. Do not fill every silence with your own speech. Let her start the "conversation."

2. Observe. Notice whether her babbling is directed at you (she is looking at you, vocalizing with apparent intent) or whether she is happily babbling to herself during play. Both are valuable, but directed babbling is an invitation to engage.

3. Imitate. Copy her sounds back to her. If she says "da-da-da," say "da-da-da" right back. This teaches turn-taking and shows her that her sounds have social power.

4. Interpret. When she babbles while reaching for something, put words to what you think she means. If she says "ba-ba" while reaching for a ball, say "Ball! You want the ball." You are building a bridge between her sounds and real words.

Follow Her Gaze

This is joint attention in its simplest, most natural form. When your baby looks at something, look at it too, and name it. "Oh, you see the light! That is the lamp. It is bright." You are doing three things at once: you are validating her interest, you are sharing an experience, and you are attaching a word to the thing she is already paying attention to. This is the most efficient way for babies to learn what things are called — because the word arrives at exactly the moment when the thing has her full attention.[^1]

Sing

Songs are language at its most patterned and repetitive, and babies love repetition. The exaggerated melody of a lullaby or nursery rhyme is parentese in musical form. Singing slows down the sounds of language, makes them predictable, and wraps them in an emotional experience that helps them stick. You do not need to be a good singer. Your baby is not a music critic. She is a language learner, and your voice — regardless of its pitch accuracy — is the one she wants to hear most.

Summary: Daily Language-Building Habits

• Narrate your routines — diaper changes, meals, walks
• Read aloud — point at pictures, name them, follow her lead
• Respond to babbling — imitate, interpret, wait for her turn
• Follow her gaze — name what she is looking at
• Sing — nursery rhymes, lullabies, made-up songs
• Use parentese — slow, warm, melodic speech with real words
• Pause — give her time to vocalize before you fill the silence

Putting It All Together

The developments of months six through nine — joint attention, canonical babbling, perceptual narrowing, and the growing responsiveness to language — are all part of a single, coordinated project: your baby is learning that the sounds people make are meaningful, that they refer to things in the world, and that she can participate in making them.

Joint attention gives her the social framework. She learns that communication is a triangle: two people and a shared focus. When you look at something together and talk about it, you are creating the conditions under which words make sense.

Babbling gives her the motor skills. She is training her mouth, tongue, and breath to produce the specific sounds of her native language. Every "ba-ba-ba" is a rehearsal for the real words that will follow.

Perceptual narrowing sharpens her ears. She is becoming an expert listener in her own language, filtering out irrelevant sounds so she can focus on the ones that carry meaning in her world.

And your voice — narrating, reading, responding, singing — is the raw material for all of it. The quantity and quality of language your baby hears in responsive, face-to-face interaction during this period directly shapes the language skills she will have in the months and years ahead.[^8]

None of this requires formal instruction. You do not need to drill vocabulary or run language exercises. The most effective language teaching in the first year looks like this: a parent and a baby, sharing the world together, taking turns noticing and responding. That is what language is, long before it is words.

Chapter Recap

Here is what to carry forward from this chapter:

• Language starts long before first words. Your baby comprehends far more than she can produce. She understands her name, responds to tone, recognizes familiar words, and communicates through gestures — all before saying a word.

• Joint attention is the foundation of communication. When your baby looks at something and then checks whether you see it too, she is practicing the most basic structure of all language: two minds focused on a shared topic. This skill, emerging between six and twelve months, predicts later vocabulary growth.

• Babbling is not noise — it is practice. Canonical babbling (the "ba-ba-ba" stage) emerges around six to nine months and represents your baby actively training her mouth to produce speech sounds. The onset of babbling predicts first words.

• Her ears are specializing. Through perceptual narrowing, your baby is becoming an expert listener in her native language, filtering out sounds that are not used around her. This is a sign of progress, not a loss.

• Parentese works. Speaking to your baby in a warm, high-pitched, slow, melodic voice with real words is not silly — it is the delivery format her brain is optimized to learn from. Research shows it measurably accelerates vocabulary development.

• The best language curriculum is daily life. Narrate your routines, read aloud, respond to babbling, follow her gaze, and sing. No special equipment needed. Your engaged presence is the most powerful language tool your baby has.

The next chapter covers months nine through twelve — when those babbled syllables begin to crystallize into first words, and those wobbly legs start carrying her toward her first steps.

References

[^1]: "Joint Attention." Before Their First Words, Universitat Pompeu Fabra. https://beforefirstwords.upf.edu/precursors-of-language/joint-attention/

[^2]: "3.5 Language in Infants and Toddlers." Lifespan Development, OpenStax. https://openstax.org/books/lifespan-development/pages/3-5-language-in-infants-and-toddlers

[^3]: "Milestones by 9 Months." Learn the Signs. Act Early., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/act-early/milestones/9-months.html

[^4]: "Language Development: 8 to 12 Months." HealthyChildren.org, American Academy of Pediatrics. https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/baby/Pages/Language-Development-8-to-12-Months.aspx

[^5]: "Baby's Babbles: What Is Babbling and When Will It Start?" Pathways.org. https://pathways.org/babbling

[^6]: "Baby Babble: A Stepping Stone to Words." The Hanen Centre. https://www.hanen.org/information-tips/baby-babble-a-stepping-stone-to-words

[^7]: "Sounds of Language." Before Their First Words, Universitat Pompeu Fabra. https://beforefirstwords.upf.edu/precursors-of-language/sounds-of-language/

[^8]: "Not Just 'Baby Talk': Parentese Helps Parents, Babies Make 'Conversation' and Boosts Language Development." University of Washington News, February 2020. https://www.washington.edu/news/2020/02/03/not-just-baby-talk-parentese-helps-parents-babies-make-conversation-and-boosts-language-development/

[^9]: "Beyond Literacy: Shared Reading Starting at Birth Offers Lifelong Benefits." HealthyChildren.org, American Academy of Pediatrics. https://www.healthychildren.org/English/news/Pages/beyond-literacy-shared-reading-starting-in-infancy-offers-lifelong-benefits.aspx