I feel at the beginning of this article I should stress that one should not put too much emphasis on the age at which children produce X number of words. Every child’s pace of development will vary. During the early years of their life, children never stop absorbing information and developing. They are never at a standstill even if progress is hardly perceptible at times. Therefore, although the aim of this article is to give a description of ‘typical’ language development please do not be alarmed if your child is developing at a different rate.

The Beginning
Babies tend to start producing meaningful noise at approximately 11 months. This noise is referred to as babbling. If your baby is between 6 -12 months it might be interesting for you to record some of their ‘babbling’ when they are either just about to go to sleep or just waking up. This may help you identify any patterns or developments. What might seem like random noise or whinging is actually the foundations for ‘talking’. Babies may pick up intonation and stress before any actual words, therefore, trying to listen to their intonation may help you work out if they are trying to copy a common word. At 16 months, many babies are moving from babbling to ‘words’. There is no sudden shift from ‘babbling’ to ‘talking’. Therefore, babbling and talking are not mutually exclusive

Trying to determine if a ‘first’ word is indeed a ‘real’ word can be quite a challenge and may be the cause of many arguments! First words can be called ‘proto words’ and are idiosyncratic to your child. Proto words cannot be classed as real words, like the ones found in your Oxford Dictionary. This is because a baby’s first ‘word’ may have many different meanings (e.g. noun, verb, adjective). A first ‘proto word’ may be /dee/ /uh/ or /ah ah/. Some literature has suggested that if the ‘word’ is said with a low pitch the child is labelling something, whereas if it said with a high pitch, the child is demanding something. A friend of mine was concerned that her 18 month old boy thought everything he saw was a dog. This was because his ‘proto’ word was /ah aaaaah/ and the first time he said it he was pointing to a dog.