Baby Talk

"Are you telling me that this mangy... drooling... mutt is going to wiv wif us foweva?! Oh, yes, he is! Yes, he is! Oh, isn't he adorable!"

— Weiss Schnee to the dog Zwei, RWBY, "Field Trip"

In TV, film, and comics, babies and toddlers tend to communicate in a manner somewhat different from adults.

Baby talk has several common tendencies:

• Misuse of pronouns (e.g. me instead of I), or not using pronouns at all
• Lack words such as "a" and "the"
• Pronunciation of the letters "L" and "R" as "W"
• Big words becoming shorter, different words which sound similar

Adults may communicate this way if they are in the Cuteness Proximity that babies, toddlers, kittens, and puppies create. Odds are, only one half of a conversation between a baby and an adult will be in baby talk. Which half depends on the tone of the work. In a bit of visual dissonance, a Fluffy Tamer might do this to an animal that most would consider anything but cute.

A variant is a sexy woman using such language to sound seductive ("Is Daddy feeling angwy? Maybe him need Baby to kiss it aww better"). This has not been used in some time because it no longer sounds sexy.

Another variant is someone using baby talk to mock another character's perceived immaturity—which generally ends up making the mocker sound even more immature than their target. And can backfire. Badly.

Want to duplicate the effect more naturally? Study linguistics (phonemes, the sounds of language): You'll become aware of which sounds we make and how they're related. Soon you'll know to simplify words by repeating sounds (doggy to goggy) and you'll be able to eliminate whole sound categories by shifting to the nearest comparable sound (e.g., F to P: fan becomes pan). Also helps when you're trying to emulate a stuffy nose (M to B, N to D: by doze is stuffed) or other speech impediments.

And if you're concerned because your kid can't say th at five, don't be. Kids develop sounds at their own rate and don't need speech therapy unless there's a physical reason for the difficulty. And just because the kid can't say the words doesn't mean they can't understand them—their guck might mean duck or truck or jug, but if you use the wrong one, they’ll certainly let you know.

Not to be confused with Baby Language, which gives pre-language babies the same treatment as Animal Talk.

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Examples:

Advertising

• In a VISA commercial, a stay-at-home mom has become so accustomed to using this kind of talk with her toddler, that she has forgotten how to speak normally. After she's been dealing with the child all day, when her husband comes home from work, she greets him with a high-pitched, uberhappy, "Is Daddy-waddy home from worky-jerky?"

Anime & Manga

• The English-language translation of Baby and Me has the toddler Minoru speaking in this manner. "Bwaza!" for "Brother" is practically his catchphrase.
• Suzie Wong of Digimon Tamers talked this way. Such examples include Terriermon as "Tewwiermon," training as "twaining," and referring to Rika as "Wika". To be fair, she seemed to have a slight form of this in the Japanese version too.
• The titular kitten in Chi's Sweet Home. The author calls it 'Chi-go' (Chi-language).
• In Hetalia: Axis Powers, little America would pronounce "Igirisu" (England) as "Igirichu". Scanlators render this as "Engwand".
• Hina in Listen to me, girls. I am your father! ("Listen To Me Girls, I'm Your Father!") does this. Justified as she's only 3 years old, and adorably cute.
• All the toddlers in Gakuen Babysitters have this to varying degrees, though Kirin's is the most prominent since she has a lot of childish speech impediments (like pronouncing "desu" as "dechu"). In an attempt at Woolseyism, all the translators so far have translated this into the Elmuh Fudd Syndwome.
• Akachanman, a baby superhero in Anpanman talks like this. He says "dechu" instead of "desu".
• In the English dub of Yu-Gi-Oh!, Joey weirds his friends out by baby-talking to his Red-Eyes Black Dragon.
• Kale's baby brothers talk like this in the English version of Happy Happy Clover.
• Hell Wolf in Tentai Senshi Sunred.
• In the Warrior Cats manga SkyClan and the Stranger, Leafstar's kits talk like this on occasion; for instance, calling squirrels "skirrels".

Comedy

• Red Skelton's character of Junior, "the mean widdle kid"...who actually dates back to Skelton's radio show.
• Josh Blue has a variation on this. People talk to him like he's mentally challenged when he's just got cerebral palsy.
  Josh Blue: I get people saying stuff like, "Hiiiiiii...Buuuuuddyyyyyyy...How...are...youuu?" You know what I say to these people? "IIIIIIIIII...need to get LAAAAID!" And that seems to throw them for a loop.

Comic Books

• ElfQuest's Preservers talk in a very irritating babyish way, but are possibly smarter than they sound (they could hardly be stupider).
• Quite a few Superbaby strips.
• The Beano: Dennis the Menace's sister Bea.
• In a collection by Lynn Johnston, David, We're Pregnant!, a young mother goes about her day followed by her baby daughter, who says "Aglaglaglaglagl" as she imitates Mom's daily tasks. When the husband comes home and says "How was your day?" the mom cheerily replies "Aglaglaglaglagl...."
• Secret Invasion (2022): Little Mary Stuart talks this way to Nick Fury when her mother calls him regarding Mr. Stuart's alleged replacement by an alien Skrull shapeshifter. As she's actually an adult Skrull impersonating a murdered child, it's all for show.
  Mary: You're gonna find him, yeah Mista Fuwwy? Pwease will you save my daddy?

Comic Strips

• Darryl sometimes did this in early strips of Baby Blues; one strip even had him stuck talking that way, much to Wanda's chagrin.
• For Better or for Worse: Almost every child character did this in their lives save for Francoise Caine and Leah Nichols. April in particular spoke in baby talk until she was eight.
• Garfield:
  • In one comic strip, Garfield encounters a woman who tries this on him. He doesn't react well:
    Garfield: Excuse me while nicey-wicey puddy tat takes a barfy-warfy in the grassy-wassy.
  • In a previous one, Jon is the culprit...
    Jon: Would puddy tat wike a bowl of milk?
    Garfield: Would funny-wooking man wike a milk bath? [he asks this while providing it]
    Garfield: [to audience] Never be condescending to a cat.

Fan Works

• Among You: In like son, like father, Pink uses this to a sickening extent when talking to her Mini crewmate, Mr. Fluffykins.
  Pink: Say bwuh-bye to Mwster Owange, Fluffles! Bwuh- bye!!!!!!!
• A metric buttload of Harry Potter fan fiction portrays Dobby and other house elves as talking like this (Kreacher is an exception, for some reason). Why this occurs is an utter mystery given that, in the books and the movies, house elves speak perfectly good English pretty much all the time. Oh sure, Dobby has pronoun trouble, and can't pronounce "Weasley", but he doesn't talk in baby talk.
• Sally Sparrow and Beth Lestrade do this with Sally's baby in Children of Time. Of course, the Doctor actually understands Baby, so no problems there...
• In The Loud House fanfics:
  • Anger Management: Lynn mocks Lincoln by saying things like "Does wittle Winky want his bunny wabbit?".
  • In The Nightmare House, an evil teddy bear in Lisa's nightmare talks about her drinking "milkies", falling on her "tushy-wushy", etc.
  • Sunday Skivvies has Luan Loud tease her brother Lincoln by speaking to him in third person and calling him "Linky Winky".
  • Lincoln's Memories:
    • In "Lola's First Bottle", she pronounces his name as "Incoln".
    • In "Lincoln Chases the Rainbow", one-year-old Lana pronounces "Kitty cat" as "Diddy dat".
• In Ninja Wizard Book 5 Harry does this with Zuko's son.
  Harry: And what cute widdle cwown pwince he is! Yes he is!
  Azula: Don't speak to him in that stupid voice! He won't learn proper enunciation!
• Pound and Pumpkin Cake's Adventures (and Misadventures) in Potty Training has Flurry Heart and the Cake twins say their "R"s and "L"s as "W"s, and use words like "ticken" for "chicken", "tat" for "that", "dun" for "don't" and "diapee" for "diaper".
• In Life, Death and Other Career Options Dumbledore does it to Snape's daughter.
  Dumbledore: Ababababababa! Ookie pookie poo! Who's the cutest lickle cutie-pie in the castle? You are! Yes, you are! A-booboobooboo!
• In Beard Hunters: a Yuletide Story Lavender does it to her boyfriend.
  Lavender: Please say yes, Emmsy-wemmsy. Pwetty pwease ... with a Lavender on top.
• The Kedabory Verse:
  • In Anything for Family, Hugtan's idea of waking up in the morning is described as waking up from her night-night sleep.
  • Some of her Encanto fanfics have the baby triplets, Padma, Benito, and Juana, speaking like this ("Timilo seepy").
  • In PreCure in a Nutshell, Princess Elle/Princess Lmnop only says "Goo goo ga ga", with a translation bubble appearing next to it to explain what she means.
  • In the Turning Red fic 4*Town and a Baby, Kayla has some dialogue that is rendered in baby talk.
• In The Guile of the Traveller Harry has issues with eating a cake shaped like a baby dragon because it's too cute, slowing down when she gets near the head.
  Orion: [Doing ventriloquism badly] Pwease don't eat me, Hawwy.
• Son of Morgaine:
  Ariana: Awe, is ickle Hawy afraid of the big bad Daphne.

Films — Animation

• The Incredibles: Baby Jack-Jack Parr. Also, his babysitter, Kari, talks in a baby talk voice to him, up until she realizes there is something decidedly unusual about this baby...
  Kari: [to Mrs. Incredible] Mrs. Parr, I can totally handle anything this baby can dish out. [to Jack-Jack] Can't I, little boo boo? Who can handle it? Who can handle it?
• Tangled: Mother Gothel's speech briefly devolves into this in her Villain Song as part of her attempts to keep Rapunzel home with mommy.
• Storks: Junior devolves into this while singing to the baby when he sees it laughing along.
• In The Boss Baby, this is Tim's mother's response to Tim's complaint that the Boss Baby is "taking over the whole house."
  Tim's Mom: [baby-talk voice] Are you taking over the whole house? Yes, you are! Yes, you are!
• In Turning Red, Ming talking to her red panda spirit devolves into this during the epilogue.

Films — Live-Action

• In Horse Feathers, a woman talks baby-talk in an attempt to seduce Professor Wagstaff (Groucho) into showing her the secret football signals, but it only annoys him.
  Wagstaff: If icky girl keep talking that way, big stwong man gonna kick all her teef wight down her thwoat.
• In How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Andie uses baby talk as one of her methods of annoying Ben enough to break up with her.
• This was how Rain Man got its title. The director tried find the funniest example of a young child mispronouncing a person's name (Raymond).
• In Look Who's Talking, Mollie's mother speaks this way to baby Mikey, which he takes as a sign she's unstable.
  Rosie: I'm going to give Mikey a bath, and then later, we're gonna have a ba-ba!
  Mikey (internally): A what?
  Rosie: (Unintelligible gibberish)
  Mikey (internally): Oh yeah, she's gone.
• 102 Dalmatians: How the Twilight Bark is spread across London, courtesy of Oddball and translated by both Waddlesworth and Kevin: "Tubble: Bad man gwabs twee wittle 'potted doggies."

Jokes

• Defied in this joke: A first-grade teacher is addressing her class on their first day.
  "Now class, you're in the first grade. Baby talk won't be tolerated, we'll be using proper English from now on." she said. "Do I make myself clear?"
  As the class nodded, the teacher then skims through the attendance sheet. "Alright, we'll begin the year with a casual conversation. Timmy, you can start by telling the class how you spend your holidays."
  A little boy at the back of the class stood up. "I went with my mamma and papa to visit my nana..."
  "Hold it," the teacher interrupted. "You went with your mother and father to visit your grandmother. Proper English. Please go on."
  "I went there on a choo-choo..." Timmy continues, only for the teacher to interrupt again.
  "You went there on a train." the teacher said. "Proper English. Continue."
  "And at my grandmother's place, I watched a cartoon." Timmy said. And then stops, as if hesitant on what to say next.
  "Go on, tell the class what cartoon you watched." the teacher said.
  At which point Timmy replies in a meek voice, "Winnie the shit..."

Literature

• In The Famous Five book Five Go To Demon's Rocks, the elderly Jeremiah talks about one of the villains being caught by the tide, and "drownded". The villain retorts with an insult ending in "get drownded too".
• At the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Bellatrix Lestrange speaks like this to mock the main character. She also does it to taunt Neville Longbottom — whose parents she tortured to insanity, likely in front of him, when he was a year old and probably speaking baby talk.
• Redwall's "Dibbuns" (baby animals) are prone to this. When combined with molespeech the results are really bizarre.
• Satirized in A Series of Unfortunate Events. Sunny Baudelaire is a surprisingly intelligent baby, but still only a baby, so she speaks in baby talk. People who know her well can apparently fully understand what she is saying, but every one of her baby talk words is translated into a well thought-out sentence for the convenience of the reader. She often speaks in nonsense words (translated into perfectly articulate English), which often reference something relevant to what she's actually saying, rather than the usual distorted English. Sunny's almost more of a Strange-Syntax Speaker, particularly in the later books.
• In To Say Nothing of the Dog, Tossie talks this way to her cat, Princess Arjumand (AKA "Dearum Dearum Juju")

• L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series:
  • Anne was firm in the idea that baby talk should never be spoken to her children; she had read a parenting book that said baby talk was an improper way for children to learn language. This goes right out the window the minute her son, Jem, is born, much to her husband Gilbert's amusement. When he calls her on it, she has this to say about the author of the parenting book:
    Anne: He never had any children of his own, Gilbert — I am positive he hadn't or he would never have written such rubbish. You just can't help talking baby talk to a baby. It comes natural — and it's RIGHT. It would be inhuman to talk to those tiny, soft, velvety little creatures as we do to great big boys and girls. Babies want love and cuddling and all the sweet baby talk they can get, and Little Jem is going to have it, bless his dear itty heartums.
  • Their youngest daughter, Rilla, had a lisp as a child. In her book, "Rilla of Ingleside", she relates how hard she worked to get rid of it, and how embarrassed she is that it still comes out when she is nervous. When her childhood friend Kenneth Ford proposes to her at the end of the book, she answers with "Yesth".
• Dorothy Parker, who wrote a book review column called "The Constant Reader" truly loathed A. A. Milne's work. In her review savaging The House at Pooh Corner she used baby talk:
  It was at the word "hummy", my darlings, that marked the first point in The House At Pooh Corner where Tonstant Weader fwowed up.
• The "jellicle cats" in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, later adapted into Cats, were named for T. S. Eliot's niece attempting to say "dear little cat." The "pollicle dogs" also mentioned in the book were "poor little dogs".
• Every single one of Louisa May Alcott's juveniles has an instance of phonetically rendered baby talk:
  • The opening chapter of Little Women ends with a flashback to the March sisters as small children, gathered around Marmee at the piano, singing "Crinkle, crinkle, 'ittle 'tar".
  • As soon as Meg March Brooke's children show up the book is laden with their adorable incomprehensibility, including little Demi's attempt to lift Daisy in an improvised "lellywaiter".
  • One character in the sequel, Little Men, is moved to religion by overhearing a small child's bedtime prayer of "Pease Dod bess everybody, and hep me to be dood".
  • A child in Jack and Jill says his nighttime prayers for fear of being a "heevin" and being "frowed to the trockindiles".

• In Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (©1961) by Ian Fleming (1905-1961; it was published two months after Fleming's death), the main villains, Joe the Monster and his gang, kidnap the Pott children, Jeremy and Jemima. In doing so, Joe uses baby talk with them.
  Joe the Monster: Now then, duckies, everything's quite all right. Your dear pa and ma have asked us to take you for a little hight drive to see something of the French countryside by moonlight.

  Joe the Monster (to one of his henchmen, Man-Mountain Fink): Ain't that right, Man-Mountain?

  Man-Mountain Fink: Absolutely-one-hundred-percent-right-and-cross-my-heart-and-wish-to-die.

  Joe the Monster: Hear that, my duckies? You're in good hands, the very best. You just go off to bye-byes, and when you wakey-wakey, there'll be a delicious brekky waiting for you.

The narrator mentions that no child enjoys being spoken to in baby language, and that Jeremy "would prefer Joe to be monstrous rather than niminy-piminy".

• In The Cat Who... Series, Polly Duncan, the girlfriend of the main character, Qwilleran, tended to talk this way to her Siamese cat Bootsie, much to Qwilleran's chagrin, as he always talked to his own Siamese in an intelligent manner, as if they actually understood what he was saying. (Which, given the Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane nature of the main "mystery-solving cat," Koko, he might actually have.) Eventually, Bootsie was renamed to Brutus and Polly got better about this.
• In Alfie, the title character's one-and-a-half year old sister Annie Rose can only say four words properly: "Daddy", "Mum", "No", and "More". Other times she either says "Dernard" (a failure to pronounce Bernard) or babbles in what her brother calls "Annie-Rose-Language".
• In Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Manny Heffley, Greg's brother, sometimes pronounces "R"s and "L"s as "W"s, "T-H"s as "F"s and gets tenses wrong (like saying "felled" instead of "fell"). Justified as he's, as he puts it, "ownwy thwee". Apparently, Greg had trouble pronouncing "R"s when he was Manny's age too.
• In A Sudden Wild Magic, two-year-old Marcus talks this way, and his speech is rendered as what an inexperienced adult might hear. Played for Laughs when he asks an easily shocked stranger for "damn damn bitches" (jam sandwiches).
• Gangsta Granny: Ben finds his granny annoying when she tells him it's time for his "beddybyes".
• In In Two Worlds, adults talk to Anthony in oversimplified sentences like "No eat sand, Anthony. No, bad. Bad." It irritates him so much he wants to eat more sand out of spite.
• Discworld:
  • In Equal Rites, Granny Weatherwax has very little idea how to deal with children:
    "Didda nasty wolfie fwiten us, den?" she hazarded.
    For quite the wrong reasons, this seemed to work. From the depths of the ball a muffled voice said: "I am eight, you know."
  • In Thief of Time, the recently reincarnated Abbot has a tendency to lapse into "wanna wanna BIKKIT" in the middle of his speech.
  • Young Sam in Thud! and Where's My Cow? repeats what Sam says, but with adorable mispronouncations. This is possibly the only thing that saves Sam after he goes off-script with the book, since Lady Sybil may suspect what "buglit" means, but she can't be sure.
  • Wentworth, Tiffany's little brother in The Wee Free Men, whose dialogue largely consists of "wanna sweetie" "wanna go-a toy-lut" and, when he meets the Nac Mac Feegle, "weewee men".
• In Good Omens, this is Sister Mary Loquatious's reaction to the baby Antichrist, who she expected to have "little hoofy-woofies".
• Roys Bedoys: In “Don’t Feed Wildlife, Roys Bedoys!”, Roys calls a squirrel “squirrely whirly”.

Live-Action TV

• An episode of Sex and the City featured Samantha being completely repulsed by a grown man who uses baby talk while having sex with her. "Gah, it's like putting ketchup on prime rib. Stop, you're ruining it!"
• How I Met Your Mother:
  • This gradually happens to Lily in "Not A Father's Day", when she finds a baby sock:
    Robin: What's that?
    Lily: It's Jeremy's sock... I'm having a baby!
    Robin: But... but what about "Project Lily"?
    Lily: But... but sohck!!
    Robin: But what about Marshall working all the time?
    Lily: But xohck!!
    Robin: Ted and I gave you all these arguments and a sock is what decides it?
    Lily: Wittwe fixiehs ohn iht!!
  • In the episode "Baby Talk", Barney tries to pick up a girl with baby talk. He succeeds.
  • Barney also does this in "How Lily Stole Christmas" when he gets sick and whines like a baby when Robin tries to take care of him, much to her annoyance.
• In a cold open of The Office it is brought to Andy's attention that many of the other employees are annoyed by his constant baby talk, which offends him.
• Good Luck Charlie:
  • Bob and Amy do this to Charlie. However, Teddy is annoyed by this so she gives them a night alone while she, PJ and Gabe babysit Charlie.
  • In a later episode, PJ uses Charlie to pick up girls at the mall and even instructs her to say "I wove PJ"(despite the fact that she can pronounce "love" properly). This has Gone Horribly Right when the girl he picks up only becomes interested in Charlie and always engages in baby talk when around her, and would only come to play with Charlie.
• 30 Rock:
  • Jenna complains about another character using "sexy baby" talk, complaining that she invented it. Cut to her coming out with the incomprehensible noises babies use before they learn to speak.
  • Also used when Jack discovers that his rival Devon Banks has leaked some sensitive information to the media.
    Devon: [childishly] Awww, looks like somebody weaked it.
    Jack: You did! You weaked it!
• Community:
  • A mild example occurs in "Cooperative Calligraphy," when the study group spends the whole episode locked in the study room because Annie's pen has disappeared, and she's convinced that someone in the group has stolen it and refuses to let anyone leave until whoever stole it fesses up. At one point, Annie hits Britta's Berserk Button by asking to have a quick "look-see" in her bag.
    Britta: There's no such thing as a "quick" invasion of civil liberties. Oh, it all starts with a quick look-see into someone's bag, and then it's a brisk peek a-roony at our phone records, and before you can say 1984, the Thought Police are forcy-worcing you to bend and spread!
  • In the Glee parody episode/Christmas Episode "Regional Holiday Music", Annie, who is usually a very intelligent and competent person, sings a song to lure Jeff into the cult-like glee club, which was a parody of how Glee sexualizes young girls and the way Christmas songs treat women, (e.g. Santa Baby). Annie is wearing a Sexy Santa Dress and sings about wanting Jeff to teach her how to understand Christmas, with it, by the last verse, morphing into baby talk.
    Annie: Bwain huwty undewstandy chwistmas, mistletoe for eaty taste good? You smarty, me dumb, help pwetty have fun, boopy doopy doop boop sex.
    Jeff: Look, eventually you hit a point of diminishing returns on the sexiness.
    Annie: What's a diminiwawawa?
  • A flashback in "Curriculum Unavailable" shows that Greendale offers a class in this.
  • "Advanced Safety Features:" When the Dean goes on a rant about buying Honda stuff, Frankie takes out her phone and says she's going to put the school's assets on "a little freezy-weezy."
• A sketch of So Random! where two women (played by Tawni Heart and Coco Jones) speak babyishly to their dogs in the mall and cause a lot of annoyance to everyone around them.
• Star Trek: The Original Series has an example in "Friday's Child", which perplexes Spock:
  McCoy: [holding a newborn baby] Oochie-woochie-coochie-coo! Oochie-woochie-coochie-coo!
  Spock: "Oochie-woochie-coochie-coo," Captain?
  Kirk: An obscure Earth dialect, Mr. Spock. If you're still confused, consult Linguistics.
• Gilmore Girls: "...And you're my outlet Michele.... Big boy walking!"
• The B-plot of The Golden Girls' final season episode "Beauty and the Beast" revolves around Sophia faking having to be in a wheelchair, so she can be taken care of by a Battleaxe Nurse who makes the other girls' lives a living nightmare. Once her ruse is revealed at episode's end, however:
  Dorothy: [angry] Get back here, you deceitful little Sicilian gecko!
  Sophia: [sweetly] I wuve you!
  Dorothy: Too wittle, too wate.
• In the new Hawaii Five-0, it's revealed Danny is called "Danno" because his daughter couldn't say "Daniel" properly. This leads to mockery from Steve throughout season one and Steve's catchphrase: "Book 'em, Danno."
• Monty Python's Flying Circus has "Overseas Minister" (a.k.a. "Mrs Nigger-baiter") with the title gentleman being talked to like this by his mum and Mrs Nigger-baiter.
  Mrs Nigger-baiter: [condescendingly] Ooh, can he talk? Can he talk, eh?
  Minister: Yes, of course I can talk. I'm minister for overseas development.
• Odd Squad:
  • In "Rise of the Hydraclops", Otto speaks in this manner to Norman, Oscar's teddy bear from when he was a young child, calling him "adowable".
  • When Baby Genius speaks for the first time in "Two Agents and a Baby", he speaks like this. It would be a justified example if he weren't a Brainy Baby.
  • Ohlm uses this as mockery against Olympia in "Odds and Ends" when she instinctively reaches behind her back for the Handcuff-inator to capture him, only for her to come up with nothing since he took away all of Precinct 13579's gadgets earlier in the episode.
    Ohlm: Ohh! Did wittle ol' Ohlm take away your gadgets?
• In the Ziwe sketch "Wet Diaper (Goo Goo Gah Gah)", Ziwe plays a pop princess who combines sexual innuendo with toddler-speak to satirize the fetishization of female youthfulness, resulting in maximum Squick factor.
• The Goodies. In "Way Outward Bound" the Villain of the Week has indoctrinated an army of babies to Take Over the World. After rescuing them, Graeme tries to break their indoctrination with a Patrick Stewart Speech which Tim translates into baby talk.

Music

• The band Geggy Tah came up with their name because their founding members (Greg Kurstin and Tommy Jordan) had young sisters at the time and neither could say their older brothers' names correctly.
• In Kay Kyser's rendition of "Three Little Fishies" each of the verses is repeated in baby talk after being sung normally.

Pro Wrestling

• Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson mocked John Cena by imitating Cena's "You can't see me!" catchphrase in baby talk, then said, "What? Are we playing peek-a-boo?"

Puppet Shows

• The Muppet Babies mostly talk like this in The Muppets Take Manhattan in comparison to their adult counterparts. Their spin-off series, however averts this. Also a pet owner uses baby-talk to speak to his dog, prompting Rowlf to deadpan, "You speak Chinese like a native."
• Sesame Street:
  • Downplayed for Elmo, Baby Bear and Cookie Monster, who have flawed English but don't sound babyish.
  • Natasha, being a baby, cannot talk but she does sometimes sort of almost try to talk (she once said "kiddy-dat" for "cat", for example). Bob once said "cootchie-coo" to Natasha.
  • A background character Freda has a baby brother who babbles gibberish. His mother and sister sometimes go "coochie-coo" to him.
  • In one episode, Baby Bear gets jealous because his one-year-old cousin, Oliver, is getting all the attention. When Telly makes baby talk to Oliver, Baby Bear says this.
    Baby Bear: You're kitchy-cooing the baby, aren't you?!
  • Baby Bear's sister Curly Bear is two years old, so she speaks like this: her grammar is imperfect and she also uses "woo-woo" to mean poop.
  • Oscar's niece Irvine is about one and a half, and can say a few words, filling in the rest with gibberish.

Radio

• A radio skit had Fergie getting angry whenever Prince Andrew mentioned his former lover Koo Stark. Unfortunately the prince then goes to play with the children and gets brained with a Frying Pan of Doom when he says, "Coochie coochie coo..."

Theatre

• Black Friday: The Adorable Abomination Wiggly does this, both in his guise as a children's toy, and in his horrifyingly monstrous true form. All his followers do this, too, and since all his followers are previously-rational adults, the effect is both hilarious and obnoxious — and weirdly creepy. And none of them drop it, even when they're threatening people, or following through on those threats.
  Wiggly: Hello, Mr. Prezy-Wez. Welcome to Drowsytown.
  President Goodman: It's you...
  Wiggly: Don't be frightened. You're my bestest buddy-wud.
  President Goodman: No! I've come to tell you to... leave us alone!
  [Wiggly and his Adorable Evil Minions all giggle.]
  Wiggly: Leave? Just before Christmas? It's going to be my birthday, you know. I can't wait to open all my presents. I think I'll start with you. I'm going to cut open your belly-well, and deck the halls with your gutsy-wutsies!
• In Little Me Belle does this when she sings about her "Dimples".
  Oh! Dem doggone dimples!
  Oh! Dey did it again!
  Tell me why a little indentation
  Should start a criminal investigation?
  Oh! Dem doggone dimples!
  If I ever go to da pen,
  Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!
  Dey did it again!

Video Games

• Luanne Lui from Backyard Sports. But that's because she's 4 years old.
• In Marco's storyline in Battle Fantasia, all of his "r"s are written as "w"s ("that's not faiw" instead of "that's not fair").
• Legends of Runeterra: Chip, Malphite's adorable baby son, has speech with poor enunciation and that doesn't allow R sounds, making him come off as even more childish and excitable.
• Sonic Generations: If you can't see Tails or Classic Tails, this is the easiest way to distinguish the two. Classic Tails still mixes his Ls, Rs and Ws.
• Done mockingly very frequently by Hazama/Terumi in the BlazBlue series, particularly notable during one of his Astral quotes:
  Hazama: It's time for a little punishment! I'll let you feel the most exquisite pain! Does it hurt? Doej it huwt?
• Charlotte in Trials of Mana, a least in the official localizations, replaces both her R's and L's with W's. The remake's English dub only amplifies it by giving her a Brooklyn accent on top of the baby talk.
• In Matchington Mansion, Antonio remarks that well-trained dogs can understand a hundred words. Tiffany replies that she never knew her dog was so smart.
  Tiffany: Aww, my snuggly-wuggly little cutesy face! You're so smartsy-wartsy!

Web Animation

• Refreshing Stories:
  • The Japanese version of "Getting revenge on my wife after finding out that she was cheating on me in a public restroom" has Hiroshi speak like this while impersonating his cheating wife Shoko to lure her lover, Ken Sawabe.
  • "I set up a baby cam to check up on my new born baby, but the camera showed me something unbelievable" [sic]: Mao's lover, Son, speaks like this while dressed up as a baby to prank Mao, unaware that it was at the time Hiroshi revealed his baby daughter, Chiko, to both his parents and in-laws.
  • The Japanese version of "My wife tried to hide the affair but..." has Tomohiro talk this way upon hearing Ayumi (Akemi) crying over the phone after Hiroshi had her call him, unaware he was collecting confirmation of their affair until he spoke.
• Weiss devolves into this in RWBY when she sees Yang and Ruby's dog Zwei, just absolutely melting at the sight of him.
• In X-Ray & Vav, Vav meets ORF for the first time and devolves into speaking this. ORF's response?
  ORF: Language input does not compute. Please speak: English!

Webcomics

• In Dead Winter, the Flight portion of Liz's fight-or-flight response is represented by a little girl who speaks this way.
• Dissonance: Sarah talks this way to keep Pandora from panicking while James takes a blood sample.
• In Commander Kitty, Zenith talks this way to her giant chimera monster.
• GirlGenius: Agatha's golem stepparents had a daughter! "Aren't you a widdle miwacle of scwience-" *WHACK*
  Lilith: She doesn't like being baby-talked.
  Agatha: [agitated] ...Smart girl.
• Pix from L's Empire talked this way right after he was born due to a combination of being a Fourth-Wall Observer and lacking the muscle memory to properly form sounds (his thought bubbles have normal text). This goes away after a week.
• Ink from Pen & Ink talks this way, both due to being a toddler and, as her bio in the comic's website describes, accentuates her disorganized nature.
• In Shortpacked!, this is how Amber talks to her hamsters.

Web Original

• Fluffy ponies have this sort of speech, to the point it's practically a language due to their different terms for some things. For example, a leader of a feral herd of fluffies is a "Smarty Friend", a mate is a "Special Friend", sex is oddly (yet fittingly) referred to as "Special huggies", and more. They also talk with a speech impediment, so the already altered term for a herd member now comes out as "Smawty fwiend". This is more prominent in a variant of the Fluffy pony derpy hooves, who's speech is literally just friend, and is even more impediment, making it "fbwend".
• Moshi Monsters:
  • The baby photos of the six clothing store owners who work at the Marketplace are described like this.
    Look at those widdle faces!
  • In the movie, Dr Strangeglove, the villain, mocks Moshlings (little animals common in the setting of Moshi Monsters) with baby talk.
    Shishi: Help me, please!
    Dr Strangeglove: Help? Of course, ickle Shishi. Seeing as you said "pwease".
    
    Dr Strangeglove: Oh, the bwave lickle snuffler lives. How adowable. You think he can defeat the doctor?!
  • During the song "The Moshi Dance", Lady Goo Goo says "Oh, coochie coo" to an Oochie Poochie (the Moshi Monsters equivalent of a poodle).

Web Videos

• Baby Godzilla and Little Godzilla speak this way in Monster Island Buddies. Averted with the baby versions of the main characters, who speak in chipmunked versions of their own voices.
• At one point in Death Note Abridged Parody Charleston VO, Light does this to Misa:
  Light: Does your bummy-twoshoes feel comfy-plumpy?

Western Animation

• Arthur:
  • D.W. speaks like this to Fur Elise the cat in "D.W.'s Furry Freakout".
    D.W.: And my little pretty-witty kitty is still sleepy-weepy-deepy!
  • In "Arthur's Baby", Francine tells Arthur that once he has a baby sibling (the yet-to-be-born Kate), he'll start talking like this all the time. This leads to Arthur having a dream wherein he lapses into baby talk at the worst possible time: Right in the middle of a school football game, where he announces that he has "an ouchie-boo-boo" after a hard tackle and causes everyone to starting laughing hysterically at him.
• Rosie does this in earlier episodes of Caillou, but no longer does in the newer episodes.
• Taffy from Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels will often talk like this to Captain Caveman when she wants him to do a favor for her, when that doesn't work a kiss from her usually will.
  Taffy: Would Cavey Wavey do Taffy Waffy a widdle favey wavy?
• Lotsa Heart Elephant from Care Bears & Cousins does this to Cheer Bear's plants in a bid to make them grow faster in the episode The Share Shack.
• Code Lyoko's Milly does this in "Big Bug" when she sees Jim walking Kiwi, saying "How's it going, Jim, walking your wittle doggie." She's teasing, as she is old enough to speak clearly.
• On Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, especially in later installments, Margaret tends to speak in single, repeated syllables to express herself, i.e. "Dan-Dan" (Daniel), "fi-fi" (butterfly), or "ba-ba." (Misinterpreted by Daniel as "boat" because they were on a boat at the time, in actuality, she was referring to a "pawprint.")
• On Doc McStuffins, Waddly Penguin, being a toy for a baby, Suki, speaks in this manner. Doc herself speaks this way when talking to Suki. Also, Lala, the toy Doc chooses for her adoptive sister, full-stop.
• The Fairly OddParents!: In "Fairly Odd Baby", Timmy speaks this way to his new fairy godbrother Poof (..."and I can bwame you for stuff"...) before noticing how stupid he sounds (..."and I'm totawwy sick of talking wike dis"...).
• Stewie Griffin on Family Guy averts this trope by being — to us — over-articulate and a (warped) child genius. But it is implied, especially by the adults around him who treat him like a fractious toddler and baby-talk him, that all they can hear is baby-noise and the tantrums of a typical "Terrible Two". Lois never hears or responds to his blood-curdling threats of matricidal violence, for instance, and carries on baby-talking him as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening. To be fair, Stewie is just a baby/toddler, so people probably just don't take him seriously because of his age (with the exception of Brian, the family's pet dog). However, this is subverted pretty soon in early seasons with other adults understanding Stewie just fine while the rest of the family either understanding him at times or not many times, indicating their understanding is general stupidity on their part.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends:
  • Foofy Wuggums, the lost teddy bear friend]] from the TV movie Good Wilt Hunting, replaces both "l" and "r" with "w". "My wittle giwl weft me hewe when she went to visit hew gwandma."
  • One of the imaginary puppies from the episode "Who Let the Dogs In" is able to talk, but due to being a puppy, he speaks like this: "I always woved you the best, Bloo."
• Franklin's sister Harriet in Season 5 and the earlier specials. She grows out of it by the time the spinoff, Franklin and Friends, rolls around. Beaver also speaks in baby talk to both her pet hamster Henry (or "Chubby Cheeks, yes, he is a widdle Chubby Cheeks...") on Franklin and to the gecko Gordon on Franklin and Friends.
• Futurama: "It's pwonounced cweam."
• Kaeloo:
  • Kaeloo does this to Mr. Cat in Episode 93 while they're enacting a scene with her as a firefighter and him as an innocent cat stuck in a burning building.
  • Mr. Cat talks like this to the mini-Kaeloos in Episode 105.
• An old Little Lulu cartoon has the department store floorwalker resort to this in a vain attempt to entice Lulu to buy some toys for her doll.
• Tweety from Looney Tunes talks like this because he is supposed to be a baby bird.
• Martha Speaks: Helen has a younger brother who's one and a half named Jake. His friends sometimes call him "Jakey". He cannot talk properly and can only say a few words, including "dog", "door" (his first word), "baby", "Skits" (his family's dog, along with Martha), "Dad" and he's tried (and failed) a few times to say "Martha".
• Given that they're infants the titular trio from Mega Babies speak in Baby Talk, especially Buck.
• Baby Ponies in G1 of My Little Pony 'n Friends didn't state some words when they talked, and didn't have correct grammar, so we had sentences like "Me try", "Get checkers", and "Maybe play now".
• In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Applejack begins comforting the apple tree she's delivering in baby talk after Rarity accuses her of treating the tree like her baby.
  • Humourously, Rarity sometimes speaks to her cat like this.
  • In "Secrets of My Excess", Spike is taken to a doctor who speaks to him in Baby Talk. Fitting since he's a baby dragon, but he doesn't find it amusing and promptly breathes fire at the doc.
  • Spike's friends sometimes call him, "Widdew Spikey-Wikey," though. And he doesn't seem to mind at all.
    • Since it's just Rarity that calls him "Spikey-Wikey," and he has a secret crush on her (that everyone knows about) she is probably the only one he'll allow to talk to him like that. Then again, he'd allow her to do almost anything she wants to him, he's that smitten.
  • Pinkie resorts to doing this with Mr. & Mrs. Cake's twin foals. However, considering that said foals are only a month old, it's justified.
  • Cheerilee and Big Macintosh speak to each other in this manner in the Hearts and Hooves Day episode as a result of the "love potion" the Cutie Mark Crusaders had given them. They continue to speak this way at the end of the episode (after the love potion had worn off) to torment the CMC as part of their punishment.
  • In the episode "Apple Family Reunion", there is a flashback of Applejack when she was just a baby. See it here.
  • Applejack speaks babyish to an embarrassed Apple Bloom in "Somepony to Watch Over Me".
• The Powerpuff Girls affect this when they tuck the pooped Professor to bed in "Burglar Alarmed".
• Rosie's Rules: Iggy calls his big sister Rosie "Wosie."
• Rugrats. Dil took it even further than the rest of the main characters, being the youngest.
• Subverted in one episode of The Simpsons where Marge lets Manjula hold Maggie.
  Manjula: [babbles to Maggie, who giggles]
  Marge: Maggie loves baby talk!
  Manjula: That was Hindi.
  Marge: Oh...
• Joy from Super Why!. Other than babbling/crying, she can say 'Why' and less commonly, 'Why-why', 'No', 'light', 'off', and 'sit'.
• 3rd & Bird: Muffin and Jordan the young birds speak like this. Both speak in third person, drop the word "the" sometimes, say "no" in place of "don't" or "doesn't", sometimes drop "s"es in verbs (like saying "he crawl" instead of "he crawls"), drop "is", and fail to pronounce names (Muffin calls her older brother Samuel "Sammel" and his friend Rudy "Oody", their friend Elliot "Ellit", and Quinn "Quinny". Jordan calls Muffin "'Uffin", which really annoys her, especially since other birds think it's cute.
• Total Drama:
  • Bridgette's and Geoff's relationship is a popular point of gossip, especially when it turns rocky in "Celebrity Manhunt's TDA Reunion Show". They make up with each other during an interview with mature apologies and baby talk like "little schmoopy-schmoo" and "cutie patootie". Josh and Blaineley judge them hard for how anti-drama the baby talk is.
  • While faking a friendly demeanor opposite of her usual self in "Moon Madness", Heather uses baby talk while cuddling an alligator, which due to the Blue Harvest Moon is genuinely friendly. Her teammates are horrified by the "poochie-poochie-poo"-ing.
  • The teams are given babies to take care of during the challenge in "Three Zones and a Baby". This suits Max perfectly, because he's a professional babysitter and just adores babies. Every time that he can, he baby talks, repeat-rhymes, and coos to his charge while not letting go of his usual pro-evil dramatics like calling the baby his "tiny minion".

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