Not talking at 20 months - should I be worried

[mixedmama]

Hi

My DS is 20 months and is at the minute hearing Turkish and Bengali and English around him.

He did seem to have two or three words a while back, mainly food (in turkish) and dad (in bengali).

He has a sound understanding in all three languages and responds to direction in all.

It is just now when other children his age are starting to say things like wee wee and poo poo so that potty training can get established DS doesnt seem to be grasping words.

He makes alot of noise and can make himslef understood.

Is this something I should be worried about.

I don't think so... the anecdotal evidence seems to be that children learning more than one language do seem to be a little later with language (although I have seen some posts on here where that was not the case).
DD (21 months) is Dutch English bilingual. She has quite a few single words, but not many of them are intelligible to anyone other than us.
Like your son, she understands both languages well, and can make herself understood. We give plenty of opportunities for her to talk, with books, giving choices etc, although she still prefers to point and say 'that!'. I think it'll come, and have seen quite a spurt in recent months.

I'm a SALT by the way, but don't work with children (haven't for years). Hopefully moondog might come along - she is a SALT, bilingual, and I think works with bilingual children.

Hello, my DS (also 20 months) is not bilingual, only English "speaking" but does not have many recognisable words. He can say mummy and daddy perfectly, and has about 20 words that I understand, but others might not . These are either single syllable (Poo!) or words that he repeats a syllable, ie he says La La when watching Teletubbies, says Beebee when he sees a baby, Nurnur for nursery etc. He talks all the time, just it is usually gobbledigook!

ds1 only has 1 language to figure out and he didn't start till he was about 2.6

Sounds completely normal to me. Neither of mine said much before the age of two and now speak three languages. Like your ds they always understood what was being said to them I think it just takes a bit longer for the words to come. Once they actually started talking they became quite fluent very quickly.

Sounds completely normal.

I have read conflicting reports about whether bilingual children speak later. Our experience was that DD did not speak fluently until she was 2.5yo, Ds a bit later, he was almost 3yo. They are bilingual English/German.

My friend had a daughter 2 days before I had DS, she is bilingual German/Italian and was speaking really well from a young age. She was talking in 5 and 6 word sentences when DS was only saying Mama.

imo, children develop at different rates, whether monolingual, bilingual or multilingual. We just have to be patient and let them do things in their own time (and not listen too much to well meaning MILS/SILS/others)