Children's first words, own languages, sentences etc?

Question

Hello everyone,

I'm just starting to study Language Acquisition, and I would be interested to hear your anecdotes and memories about your children learning to talk.

What were your children's first words? How old were they?
Before your child could speak properly, did they have their own words for objects such as blankets or dummies or concepts such as food?
Do you think your child's language acquisition was affected by anything around them? For example, the baby who referred to milk and food as "Ning", mimicking the noise of the microwave.
Did your child have a lot of face to face interaction or were they left alone for periods, especially in front of the TV?
At what age did your child begin to form sentences?

Any other anecdotes would also be appreciated, however irrelevant you might think them.

TW x

Also, what should an average child be able to say at eighteen months? I have been assured by my parents that I was forming quite complex sentences. Is this normal?

Answer 1

My 10year old didnt speak properly till he was 2. He could say mamma and dadda before then, dum dum for his dummy and boh boh for his milk bottle. He used to point at things and say 'ahjit ahjit', think he was saying 'is it?'. My sis name pronounced Yan Yan he would go nuts and scream out 'yna yna!' and his hamster named Brain, as in Pinky and the Brain, he said 'abeeya!' He called himself 'Dayday' for David. with food he's say 'yum' or 'seeties'
He formed sentences from around his 2nd birthday, like 'Dayday fallded', well, it was sentence enough for me!
He was a late speaker but a very early walker at 9 months, ive put it down to his development only concentrating on 1 thing at a time. Also his dad was away with the army till he turn 2 so maybe his sentences didnt form till he started hearing me having constant conversations.
My 1 year old son is totally different, he can't walk yet or talk other than mamma and dadda and dadda for his big bro too! He can sound a few words like 'joo' for juice and 'bo' for ball. He says 'yeah!' alot when he does something we have praised him for.
All children grow up differently from eachother, esp mine!

Answer 2

My oldest son is 3 and a half. His first word was "duck". He later dropped that word and quit being able to say the /k/ sound for a while. He then said mamama for Mom and Dat (with a really hard /t/ sound) for Dad. We signed with him, and I don't know if that delayed his speech, but he didn't start using sentences until just after he was 2. He is VERY verbal now, so the delay (if there was one) was simply that, a delay, and not a permanent problem. He started using sentences after words without much in between. He pretty much just said one or two words together for several months and then just popped out with regular sentences. The only kind of funny thing he called an object (other than typical mispronunciations) was he always called water "a-wah". For the first year of his life, he was in daycare three days a week and had a nanny two days a week. Then I quit my job. They only watched one video per day at his daycare and his nanny let him watch 1 hour of TV per day.

Our younger son is 13 months and he also says mamama for Mom and says Daddy pretty distinctly, although he gives a little pause between syllables: "Da---DEE". I am home with him and he watches some TV, but he isn't really all that interested in it when it is on. I would say maybe an hour a day, at the most, but not all at once.

Answer 3

My 7 year old son started having speech therapy at 2 years old due to a stammer, and i think that part of this is hereditoy, coz my dad and me both have stammers, and my son just copied me talking, he also has a lisp, but thatis not a problem...he is understood by everyone at school and home. The funny thing was that he started talking really early..about 9 months

My 2 year old (3 in April) is a perfect speaker, no stammer or lisp, yet the majority of what he does say can only be understood by me, but i am not worried coz at the end of the day all kids talk, some slower than others..but it makes no difference to the!

i had speech therapy myself, for my stammer, and am now 'cured'..but still stammer if i get nervous or angry, or when having drank too much!

Answer 4

First Word was mama or mum mum. very young only a few months I think. He was forming proper sentences at around 10 to 12 months before that- it only made sense to me no one else.

He called his belly button "bam bam" because he couldn't say it and that turned into anything that was round was a bam bam. He calls police cars, fire engines and ambulances "Nah- Nah's" because of the siren. His dummy he used to call a Dodie.

I talked constantly to him, went shopping and included him in everything - people did look at me strange. At eighteen months - full sentences and reasoning. He could tell you why, and how.

His attention span was not good so the TV would not keep him amused so he very rarely watched it even though it was on. If he did you got cross questioned about everything that was happening.

Now he is almost three (in march) and his language and vocabulary are excellent he can understand Spanish as well as English but only speaks it on occasions. He is now obsessed with dvd's and I am forced to watch lightening mcqueen in Disneys Cars over and over again.

Sending him to Nursey improved his speech a lot.

I was surprised a few weeks ago I had asked him to get the catalogue becasue I was looking for something , later on there were papers and a mess everywhere, I started shouting, he very calmly said "Mummy I do not understand, you told me to get it and now you are shouting at me because I got it" I hadn't realised that that is in fact what I had done. Also I was quite shocked at the way he was very calm and pointed out what had happened!

Answer 5

The first thing that my daughter said was "What's that" I believe that this was a little before her first birthday. She has had constant face time since she was born. Now she is three, and starting to play on her own a bit. She starting forming sentences somewhere between 2 and 21/2. Her sentences are now becoming more complex, though her pronunciation can be a bit off. She does watch Dora the explorer (Noggin runs in the background at our house all day) so she has a few words in Spanish, mainly colors, and she can count to ten in Spanish. If she opens anything she will repeat a phrase from Dora - "to get it to open we have to say obre. say obre!"

Answer 6

My son's first word was at about 9 months - he was diplomatic and didn't choose between mama and dada, but bless him, his first word was "kitty" (we have 2 cats.) He says what sounds like "bao" when sombody sneezes (we say "bless you" to him.) He could speak simple sentences ("where dada go?" "whats that?") by around 14 months. He's 21 months now and a HUGE chatterbox. He easily has a 50+ word vocabulary and can identify and name people in photos and characters from TV - like the muppets) when he sees a picture. We have always talked to him quite a lot, and he's been exposed to a variety of music. We do watch more tv than is probably good for him - mostly in the morning when we are eating breakfast and getting ready for daycare - but we have always interacted with him while he's watching (talked about what was on, danced to the Wiggles - patted along with the Little Einsteins...)

Good luck with your study!

Answer 7

What were your children's first words?
MA aged 11 months = 'upert'. She has a Rupert bear board book
Jen aged 7 months 'car' for 'look at that' I used to point out cars from our 3rd floor window. This was followed up by 'cat' for cat and coc (anything round). I was so surprised after 'car' that my wife/ myself/ourbaby sitter agreed to write the words down before we told each other what we had noticed. There was no doubt about it though there were up to 2 days difference in when each one noticed.

Before your child could speak properly, did they have their own words for objects such as blankets or dummies or concepts such as food? No even 'coc' seems to have come from 'clock'

Do you think your child's language acquisition was affected by anything around them? The children were rarely left alone.

At what age did your child begin to form sentences? Dunno

Any other anecdotes

I tbegan to teach them to read the moment the could talk and by 18 months it was clear that written and spoken language were going kind of hand in hand. Jen was faster than MA but she watched her sister. As sentences developed they both found being presented with 'egg ate Tom' the height of humour. With both reading and talking nouns were learned first, prepositions took ages to come.

My son never really wanted to learn to read so I didnt force it.

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Answer 8

When my son was about 14 month he used to refer to his grandad as Agear we came to the conclusion that i was because his dad used to ask for a beer whenever we visited!!
He's been talking in good clear sentences since he was about 18months, now he's 2yr 7month and he has a great personality, talks huge conversations that I forget he's so young. He never forgets a thing and has ears like a bat because he doesn't miss a trick. Spend alot of time with him. He's also a jigsaw genious and was doing 24 pieces by 2. Knew every Thomas train by name and sight by 18months, counted to 20 by 2, also his colours and shapes including gold,silver light/dark blue. His speech is very clear and because he is tall evey 1 thinks he's 4, but I think children are becoming more intellectual these days, he's clever but after singing his praises he still has a dummy for bed unfortunatley!!!!

Answer 9

We have a 12 year old girl that was an only child, only niece, only grandkid in our family for four and a half years. Everyone around her were adults that guessed what she wanted to say by the faces she made or the movement of her hands and body. It happens she had no speech problems at all, she was just too confortable expressing herself in other ways the people around her got used to understanding. After 2 weeks in preschool she was speaking full sentences with everyone, and has never had a problem getting into the High Honor Roll. I guess she didn't need to develop speech to comunicate until she was in the middle of kids and teachers that didn't understand her "face talk".
On the other hand we have an 18 month old boy that calls most of his toys and family members by 2-syllable names, calls his soccer ball "goal", and since our main language is Spanish he calls his milk "lete" (for "leche) and his water "agua", calls mom and dad as "mama" and "papa" and his nanny Reina as "Neina". He says "pupu" or "pipi" when he has soiled or wet his diaper. He is not going for sentences yet. We talk to him as if he was a bigger child and try to get him to say the word that represents what he wants before giving it to him.
Hope this helps.

Answer 10

My daughter's first word (apart from Mummy and Daddy) was "rawplug". She could copy whatever you said but didn't really "know" the words and would forget them by the next day. Before that she spoke her own jibber language. The sounds just gradually got replaced by words. She still talks a lot.

She was definately speaking in sentences and singing nursery rhymes by 18 months. I remember because my son was born then.

My son on the other hand was a lot older before he starting speaking, about 2.5 years old, his first words were "clouds moving".