# Do you baby talk to your SO? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 25, 2006, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-baby-talk-to-your-so/365924 "2006-07-25T03:45:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Nutty\_Bunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/d07c76/32.png) [@Nutty\_Bunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nutty_Bunny)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-baby-talk-to-your-so/365924/21 "2006-07-25T16:18:10Z")
[QUOTE=Runs With Scissors] It’s kind of the way people talk to babies: “Oh, who’s cute? Who’s the cutest baby? What? That’s RIGHT! It’s YOU!” High pitched, little girl talking to a puppy, drippy, syupy way of talking. [/QUOTE] My husband used this tone of voice with me a couple of nights ago (we have a 4-month old baby) and I said, “Honey, I’m your wife, remember?” I thought it was cute that his brain was still in baby mode, but I don’t want him making a habit of it. ---
**Author:** ![Pazu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pazu/32/15522_2.png) [@Pazu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pazu)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-baby-talk-to-your-so/365924/22 "2006-07-25T16:18:53Z")
Constantly. It’s absolutely disgusting. ---
**Author:** ![Missy2U](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3bc359/32.png) [@Missy2U](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Missy2U)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-baby-talk-to-your-so/365924/23 "2006-07-25T16:50:38Z")
No way, Jose. No baby talk. I do the toddler Nooooooooooooooooooooooo thing Kal mentioned, but that’s about the extent of it. Oh - and he does a pouty face thing sometimes. That’s usually my signal to snort beer through my nose laughing at him because he looks ridiculous. That’s it. Now I talk goofy to the dog, but then I give him his treats so he doesn’t care what the sam hill crazy ass stuff I say. But it’s GOOFY - it’s not BABY talk. ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-baby-talk-to-your-so/365924/24 "2006-07-25T20:11:15Z")
We do not baby talk. Unless we’re really trying to annoy each other - then all bets are off. Only slightly less annoying than baby talk would be the couples who have a “routine” - it’s obvious that the lines have been said before, many times. One starts with the setup, the other slams it home. :rolleyes: We spent the evening with a duo like that. One evening. One time. Cured us. ---
**Author:** ![Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a88e4f/32.png) [@Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleanor_of_Aquitaine)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-baby-talk-to-your-so/365924/25 "2006-07-25T20:25:44Z")
No… except that our pet name for each other is pretty silly. We’ve been doing it for so long that it doesn’t sound silly to us anymore. We don’t use it around other people, but of course our kids have heard it and they outed us to a few people when they were toddlers. ---
**Author:** ![Kairos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecc23a/32.png) [@Kairos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kairos)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-baby-talk-to-your-so/365924/26 "2006-07-25T22:23:30Z")
Hell no. I hate baby talk. I can always tell when one my cow-orkers is talking to his wife on the phone - he doesn’t use baby talk, exactly, but his voice takes on this cloying, syrupy, sing-songy quality that drives me up the wall. If I was his wife I’d kick him in the nuts for talking to me like that. I’m very curious if she likes it, or if she’s barely restraining the urge to kick him in the nuts herself. I don’t even baby talk my cats, though it seems like all of my friends do. One of my friends will pet Tyberius and say “Who’s a kitty? Who’s a kitty?” Every once in a while I lose it and say something to the effect of “Tyberius is a cat! And Isadora is, too! And since THEY CAN’T TALK, I figured I’d clear that up for you, since you don’t seem to know.” GAH! ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-baby-talk-to-your-so/365924/27 "2006-07-25T22:59:57Z")
[QUOTE=Kairos] I don’t even baby talk my cats, though it seems like all of my friends do. [/QUOTE] I do talk to the fuzzy black land shark, but not baby-talk. When I get home from work, and he greets me on the front porch with a prrmiaow, I will usually say something like, “Mmm, I see. Well, I’ll be expecting a full report later, at your convenience.” 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-baby-talk-to-your-so/365924/28 "2006-07-25T23:15:01Z")
I just realize that I affect a Georgia drawl when I talk to my cat. ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-baby-talk-to-your-so/365924/29 "2006-07-25T23:24:17Z")
FWIW, I’ve never been to Georgia. (Although I’ve spent time in Alabama, Tennessee and Florida and I know a handful of Georgians.) > [@Cervaise](#): > > I do talk to the fuzzy black land shark, but not baby-talk. When I get home from work, and he greets me on the front porch with a prrmiaow, I will usually say something like, “Mmm, I see. Well, I’ll be expecting a full report later, at your convenience.” When my uncle’s cat whines for attention, he (the uncle, not the cat) says “Oh, I know, it’s just awful how they treat cats these days.” It’s even better if you know that he’s about as much of a hard-line conservative as hard-line conservatism can produce and he’s parodying himself. ---
**Author:** ![Telperien](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/65b543/32.png) [@Telperien](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperien)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-baby-talk-to-your-so/365924/30 "2006-07-25T23:31:54Z")
No, no, a thousand times no. The closest I come to baby talk is sarcastically calling a certain friend “snugglebunny.” I don’t even baby-talk to actual babies. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Bird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Little\_Bird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Bird)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2006, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-baby-talk-to-your-so/365924/31 "2006-07-26T00:22:41Z")
[QUOTE=Idlewild] Mr. Wild and I have an obnoxiously cute private language at home. I wouldn’t call it baby talk but it certainly isn’t my usual crisp intonation either. We don’t talk like that in front of other people though, because I’m fully aware that it’s nauseating. What? Some people juggle geese. [/QUOTE] **BirdMan** and I also share a private language. It’s nauseatingly cute and we never, ever use it in public or even on the phone when we thing peole might hear us. It started with a couple words–“Appee Cidee” for “Apple Cider,” “Babbletar” for “Battlestar Galactica,” “Karate Cake” for “Carrot Cake.” We don’t use baby voices when we speak it. I like it, I find it comforting and nice. It’s like we have a secret twin language all of our own. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![George\_Kaplin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3e96dc/32.png) [@George\_Kaplin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/George_Kaplin)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2006, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-baby-talk-to-your-so/365924/32 "2006-07-26T00:58:04Z")
Me and my SO, knowing how insufferably goddamn _stick-yer-finger-through-yer-eye-'n-swirl-yer-brain-around_ annoying it is, make a point of using it as often as possible when we’re around friends. It pisses 'em off like nothing else. Once, when we were giving it all like “No _you’re_ the sweetest li’l munchkin in the _whole_ of toytown” type bullshit, one of her girlfriends had to leave the room with a nosebleed. Some may attribute it to weak nasal capilliaries. I like to think it was the babytalk. But if I ever tried that shit in private she’d rip my heart right out, I’m sure of it. ---
**Author:** ![easy\_e](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/eb8c5e/32.png) [@easy\_e](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/easy_e)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2006, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-baby-talk-to-your-so/365924/33 "2006-07-26T01:23:00Z")
While I wouldn’t exactly call it baby talk, there are times where either I, my boyfriend, or both of us will talk like a child (not the high voices, more like the grammar structure). It’s never in front of others and usually when we wake up on a lazy weekend morning and haven’t gotten out of bed yet. I don’t know how to describe it or exactly why we do it. It could be a combination of showing vulnerability and trying to get away with saying something that we couldn’t get away with in an adult voice. Here’s one attempt to explain (it’s from **Contact** by Carl Sagan): > [@](#): > > She began to understand why lovers talk baby talk to one another. There was no other socially acceptable circumstance in which the children inside here were permitted to come out. If the one-year-old, the five-year-old, the twelve-year-old, and the twenty-year old all find compatible personalities in the beloved, there is a real chance to keep all of these sub-personas happy. Love ends their long loneliness. Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively invovled in a given relationship. With her previous partners, it seemed, at most one of these selves was able to find a compatible opposite number; the other personas were grumpy hangers-on. Though, FWIW, the character doesn’t stay in that relationship through the end of the book. ---
**Author:** ![betenoir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/258eb7/32.png) [@betenoir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/betenoir)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2006, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-baby-talk-to-your-so/365924/34 "2006-07-26T01:39:09Z")
I talk _dirty_ to my SO. I say things that would burn the ears right off any child in the room (not that I would say them with a child in the room). That’s the point of having an SO. I can’t imagine the attraction of baby talk with an adult. I guess i might with my cat…they’re not as smart as they think they are. ---
**Author:** ![Podkayne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Podkayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Podkayne)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2006, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-baby-talk-to-your-so/365924/35 "2006-07-26T02:24:52Z")
Given how annoying we find it when other people do it, Og only knows we do it. But, yeah, we do it. In private. We have a friend who babytalks to his wife in public or when he’s on the phone with her. _ugh_ But, in the privacy of one’s own home, between two consenting adults, it’s . . . uh . . . Okay, yeah, it’s incredibly lame. But, it’s, I dunno, kind of reassuring and safe. You don’t have to be the Responsible Adult all the time around your partner. You can let your shields down and be silly, and they won’t reject you. In fact, they even like the silly side of you. Kinda like walking around naked in front of each other. I do not have a hawt bawdy, and I wouldn’t be comfortable even in a bikini in public, nor do I think the public would want to see me in one. But I can be naked in front of my husband, and he actually seems to like it. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2006, 9:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-baby-talk-to-your-so/365924/36 "2006-07-26T09:17:35Z")
I had a couple stay at my apartment for a few weeks one time. It was only a one bedroom so they had to sleep on the fold out couch in the living room. I had come home late one night. They already had the bed pulled out. The guy (my long time friend) was asleep but his GF was still awake whatching tv. I was sitting in the adjacent dinning room having a bite to eat. All of the sudden my friend wakes up out of a dead sleep and utters these words to his GF: (Said in a VERY baby-ish voice) him: “Baby? Baby?” her: “Yes. I’m right here” Him: “I had a bad dweem that yew whur goin to weeve me and I was sho shad and I…” Her: “HONEY HONEY HONEY!! Shakes is in the room with us!” Him: “What? OH Fuck!..” zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Me: 😃😃😃😃😃😃😃😃😃😃😃😃😃😃😃😃😃😃😃😃😃😃😃😃 And then I was morbidly disgusted. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2006, 9:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-baby-talk-to-your-so/365924/37 "2006-07-26T09:24:29Z")
No I don’t. I don’t even babytalk to my 9 months old nephew. I make baby-noises back at him (he goes “bz-BRRRR. K-KH!” and I go “bz-BRRR, eh? all that? Honey, it’s a pity I don’t have a baby-Spanish dictionary, it sure sounds interesting”), but no “oooooh, 'os a cutie-ushieeeee? oooh, such a cutie-ushie! here, look at the piopio!” like I see other people do. It’s a bird, not a piopio. ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2006, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-baby-talk-to-your-so/365924/38 "2006-07-26T15:38:46Z")
Ugh, no! The man has a PhD in physics and somehow that, plus babytalk, is a jarring combination. Then again, I felt ridiculous when I babytalked to the _kids_ and so never did it. doubtless, this explains a lot. ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2006, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-baby-talk-to-your-so/365924/39 "2006-07-26T15:57:40Z")
Sometimes if Mr. K is late getting home, I’ll scream “I THOUGHT YOU DIED!!!” in a panicky, freaked out voice. Like something a 7-year-old would do if they walked into the room they thought you were in, but weren’t. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2006, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-baby-talk-to-your-so/365924/40 "2006-07-26T21:02:12Z")
[QUOTE=Kairos] I don’t even baby talk my cats, though it seems like all of my friends do. One of my friends will pet Tyberius and say “Who’s a kitty? Who’s a kitty?” Every once in a while I lose it and say something to the effect of “Tyberius is a cat! And Isadora is, too! And since THEY CAN’T TALK, I figured I’d clear that up for you, since you don’t seem to know.” GAH! [/QUOTE] It seems everyone who visits us feels compelled to baby talk to our cats. “Who’s the putty of the tat?” “Who’s the biggie wiggie boy?” “Whhhhhhhere’dItGo? Whhhhhere’dItGo?” It drives me abso-fricking-totally bonkers. True, our cats are the cutest in the universe, but they’re still _CATS!_. In human years, they’re in their 60s! There is very little you can do when you visit that will give me an undying urge to boot your ass out more than to talk this way in our house. Blech! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-baby-talk-to-your-so/365924.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-baby-talk-to-your-so/365924.md?page=3)