Is this normal language development?

[Bubbinsmakesthree]

DS is 20 months old. His language is coming on but it is emerging so differently from my how my eldest developed at this age.

At this age my eldest developed individual words and gradually built conversational complexity (for instance he might have learnt ‘cat’ and ‘mine’ then combined the two when talking about his cuddly toy cat). The words were the building blocks to short sentences that became more complicated over time once he had nailed the vocab.

20mo old DS on the other hand jabbers away sixteen to the dozen and seems like he’s trying to express more complex thoughts than ‘cat mine’ - but he is mostly unintelligible. He reminds me of the Swedish Chef in the Muppets - constant monologue and occasionally there’s a word you half-recognise amongst the gobbledygook.

He probably has about 40-50 distinguishable words, most of which I gradually start to understand in context (“noma” for snowman for instance) as they become a bit clearer. But lots of what he says that seems to have meaning to him baffles me.

Generally he’s bright, understands a great deal of what I say etc.

Is this just a different type of ‘normal’ language development to what I saw with my eldest?

[Snotonmyshirt]

Sorry I don’t know if it’s normal, but this is exactly what my 21 month old is like. She chatters away all day long in what looks like meaningful sentences but is almost completely just noise. She slots the odd real word in that she knows, or sometimes a few words together, but most of the time I’ve not a clue what she’s on about. She also has her own words for things that she frequently repeats but don’t sound anything like the real word - for example her brothers name is Grayson yet she repeatedly calls him ‘Nenyeh’. I’m sure the HV doesn’t test their language until 2.5yrs(?), and I assume it’s because it takes a lot of kids until then to grasp it, so I’m just going to hold off my worry to see how she compares with what’s expected of her then

[AladdinMum]

yes, it all sounds very typical and not concerning at all.

[jessstan2]

All sounds quite normal. Often a second child speaks in sentences later than the first because the first does a lot of the talking for him. I knew a very clever young lady who didn't speak a word before the age of three!

So you have nothing to worry about, he sounds fine.

[Bubbinsmakesthree]

They sound extremely similar @snotonmyshirt !

If I had a concern I guess it was around whether he is hearing clearly, given he has so many “words” that are unintelligible - I don’t recall this with my eldest at all.

I think he does more mimicking of conversational style because he hears more of it. Things like reading - with my eldest we spent a lot of time with simple ‘first word’ picture books that developed his vocabulary, whereas second time around DS2 is more likely to listen to me reading long stories to him and his brother - so he hears a lot more complex sentences, intonation etc.

I’ve heard that before about older siblings ‘talking for’ younger ones but i’ve not seen much evidence of that with my two - if anything I think having an older brother makes my youngest more motivated to join in. I guess personality might come into it - my eldest is quite cautious and methodical so maybe it follows that his language development built on mastering individual words. DS2 is gregarious and fearless so it seems appropriate that he has dived into meaningless chatter!

It’s all quite fascinating really!

[gower4]

It's called jargon, it's a normal stage of language development

[Snotonmyshirt]

@Bubbinsmakesthree id actually never considered it being an issue with hearing. That is a really interesting point that makes quite a bit of sense! Might keep an eye on that