Babbling is made up of meaningless speechlike syllables called canonical syllables. Canonical syllables are characterized by the coordination of consonantal and vocalic elements in syllables that have speechlike timing, phonation, and resonance characteristics. Infants begin to babble on average at approximately seven months of age. Babbling continues in parallel with less mature noncanonical vocalizations that make up the majority of utterances through the first year. Babbling also continues in parallel with the emergence of meaningful speech during the second year. Regardless of the language that the infant is learning, most canonical syllables have a CV shape with the consonant being a labial or alveolar stop or nasal and the vowel most likely to be central or low- to mid-front in place (e.g., [bʌ], [da], [mæ]). Approximately 15% of canonical utterances consist of multisyllable strings; in other words, most babbled utterances contain only a single CV syllable. The onset of the canonical babbling stage is crucially dependent upon normal hearing, permitting access to language input and feedback of self-produced speech. Many studies have reported differences in the phonetic and acoustic characteristics of babble produced by infants learning different languages. These differences include the frequency with which certain consonants are produced, the location, size, and shape of the vowel space, and the rhythmic and intonation qualities of multisyllable babbles, in each case reflecting specificities of the input language. However, replications of these findings are rare and further research is required to better understand the learning mechanisms that underlie language specific acquisition of articulatory representations during the prelinguistic stage of vocal development.