It’s true! And we’ve known this for a few years, but it never ceases to amaze me when I think about it.
To learn more, I encourage you to check out this amazing article on multilingualism and fetal development. TLDR: babies who gestated around parents speaking French are distinguishable in their cries from babies who gestated around parents speaking German.
One of my favorite bits of this article:
Today, Dr. Wermke’s lab houses an archive of around a half-million recordings of babies from as far afield as Cameroon and China, where a team of graduate students armed with recording equipment paced the corridors of a Beijing hospital around the clock. (Babies are never made to cry for the sake of a recording, so the students dove into a room whenever they heard a promising specimen).
Abby the Sociologist Doula 