Babbling Day

What the day is

Babbling Day is observed on October 21. It celebrates talking at length and to little purpose, which most people do more than they admit.

Origin and background

The origin of the observance is not documented.

Babbling in the technical sense is a stage of infant development and a well-studied one. Babies begin producing repeated consonant-vowel syllables at around six or seven months, and the sounds they make are not random. They start with a broad range covering sounds from many languages and gradually narrow toward the ones they actually hear, so that by the end of the first year a baby babbling in a Japanese-speaking household sounds different from one in a Spanish-speaking household.

Deaf infants exposed to sign language babble with their hands, producing repetitive meaningless gestures on the same developmental timetable. That finding matters because it shows babbling is about language acquisition generally rather than about vocal practice specifically.

Adult babbling is a different thing and mostly social. A large proportion of ordinary conversation carries little information and exists to maintain a relationship: remarks about weather, repetition of things both parties know, noises of agreement. Linguists call this phatic communication, and a conversation stripped of it becomes an interrogation.

The English language is unusually well supplied with words for it. Blatherskite, which appears in older accounts of this day, is a fine one, and prattle, waffle, witter, jabber and blether are all doing slightly different work.

How to take part

• Talk to someone about nothing for longer than necessary. This is the entire holiday.
• Babble back at a baby. Responsive turn-taking, even with nonsense, supports language development measurably.
• Phone someone rather than messaging them, and allow the call to be pointless.
• Learn one new word for talking too much and deploy it.
• Resist editing yourself for one conversation, then notice how much you normally do.