Babies coo from about 2 months, start true babbling (ba, da, ma) somewhere between 5 and 10 months, and most are stringing together “babababa” or “mamamama” by 9 months. First real words usually arrive around 12 months, two-word phrases by 2 years, and by 3 most children chat in short back-and-forth conversations that strangers can mostly follow.
The one babbling milestone worth watching closely: if your baby isn’t making consonant-vowel syllables like “ba” or “da” by about 10 to 11 months, get their hearing tested, however many languages you speak at home. Below: each stage, a milestone table to age 3, what multilingual Malaysian homes should expect, and the signs of speech delay that mean stop waiting.
Babbling stages: what your baby sounds like, month by month
Ages overlap. The order matters more than the exact week.
0–2 months: crying and comfort sounds. Crying, grunts, sighs and little throaty noises. By 2 months the CDC expects “sounds other than crying” and a reaction to loud sounds.
2–4 months: cooing. Long vowel sounds like “ooo”, “aah” and “mmm”, often in reply when you talk. This is the first turn-taking: you speak, baby coos, you answer.
4–6 months: vowel play, squeals and raspberries. Louder, more varied sounds: squeals, growls, blowing raspberries, and vowels starting to pick up a consonant (“aaagoo”, “daaaa”). Babies now take turns making sounds with you. The consonant-to-vowel change in these early syllables is still slow and smeared.
5–10 months: canonical babbling. The big one. Crisp, adult-like syllables with a real consonant and vowel: “ba”, “da”, “na”, repeated as “bababa” or “dadada”. In typically developing babies this starts between 5 and 10 months, and by 9 months most babies babble long strings. These syllables are the raw material for first words.
9–15 months: mixed babbling and first words. Syllables get mixed (“badagu”). Your baby copies your sounds, and the first one or two real words appear, often alongside waving and pointing.
12–18 months: jargon. Long streams of babble with speech-like rises and falls, sprinkled with real words. It sounds like your toddler telling you a story in a language you don’t speak. That’s normal.
Speech milestones by age, 0–3 years
This table combines ASHA’s communication milestones with the CDC’s 2022 checklists. The CDC column is the safety net: its milestones are things 75% or more of children do by that age, so a child who isn’t doing them is a reason to talk to your doctor, not to wait another month.
| Age | Sounds and words (ASHA) | Missing this by this age? Act (CDC) |
|---|---|---|
| 0–3 months | Startles or quiets to sound, coos “ooo, aah”, sounds back and forth with you | 2 months: makes sounds other than crying, reacts to loud sounds |
| 4–6 months | Giggles, raspberries, vowels joined to a consonant (“aaagoo”, “daaaa”) | 4 months: coos, turns towards your voice. 6 months: takes turns making sounds, squeals, blows raspberries |
| 7–9 months | Babbles long strings (“mamama”, “babababa”), looks when you call their name, raises arms to be picked up | 9 months: babbles “mamamama” and “bababababa”, looks when you call their name |
| 10–12 months | Copies your sounds, points, waves, says one or two words (“mama”, “dada”, “hi”, “bye”) | 12 months: waves bye-bye, calls a parent “mama”, “dada” or a special name, understands “no” |
| 13–18 months | Jargon with real words mixed in, shakes head for no, points to ask and show, follows simple directions | 15 months: one or two words besides mama/dada, points to ask for help. 18 months: three or more words besides mama/dada, follows a one-step direction without a gesture |
| 19–24 months | At least 50 words, two-word phrases (“more water”, “go outside”), “me”, “mine”, asks for help | 2 years: two words together (“more milk”), points to things in a book when asked, points to two body parts |
| 2–3 years | Word combinations used often, plurals and “-ing” words, asks why and how, says p, b, m, h, w, d, n correctly; strangers may still struggle to understand | 3 years: back-and-forth conversation of at least two turns, asks who/what/where/why, says first name, understood by others most of the time |
If your baby was born early, ask your paediatrician whether to read this by corrected age.
Two things the table doesn’t show well. First, understanding comes before talking: a 15-month-old who brings you their shoes when you ask, but says little, is in a much better place than one who neither understands nor talks. Second, gestures count. Pointing, waving, nodding and lifting arms to be picked up are communication, and a toddler who points a lot is usually on the way to words.
Why babbling matters (and what it predicts)
Babbling is practice for the mouth and the ears together. Your baby makes a sound, hears it, and adjusts. That feedback loop is why hearing loss shows up in babbling first.
Eilers and Oller (1994) followed 94 babies with normal hearing and 37 with severe to profound hearing loss. Every hearing baby started canonical babbling before 11 months, typically around 7 months. None of the deaf babies started before 11 months, and many started well into their third year. Because the two groups didn’t overlap, the authors concluded that no canonical babbling by 11 months should prompt an audiology referral straight away. A later study of 1,536 high-risk babies, checked at about 10 months corrected age, found that late babbling was uncommon, but when it happened it was often linked to genetic, neurological or physical conditions, and more than half of those babies had no diagnosis yet when the late babbling was spotted.
ASHA adds that babbling delays before age 2 can predict later vocabulary delays. A 2019 review of babies later diagnosed with autism, Rett syndrome or fragile X found they were less likely to reach canonical babbling, or reached it after 10 months, but the studies were few and measured babbling in different ways. The authors call it a promising marker that needs more research before clinical use. None of this is a reason to worry about a quiet 6-month-old: the normal window runs to 10 months.
Bilingual and trilingual homes: does it cause speech delay?
No. That holds for a Malaysian toddler who hears Malay from Atok, English from Mum, Mandarin or Cantonese from Dad, Tamil from Paati and Bahasa Indonesia or Tagalog from the helper.
- Babbling: babies in bilingual and one-language homes start canonical babbling at the same age (Oller and colleagues, 1997, 73 babies followed from 4 to 18 months).
- Words: ASHA says late talking is not caused by learning a second language or two languages at once. Bilingual children learn words at about the same rate as monolingual children when you add up their vocabulary across languages.
- Mixing: “Nak more susu” or “Mummy, 我要 that one” is code-switching. The RCSLT calls it normal bilingual language use, not a sign of a language problem.
- Dropping a language: ASHA says professionals shouldn’t recommend that a family switch to one language when a child is a late talker, and bilingualism hasn’t been shown to hold back children who do have a language disorder.
The practical rule from ASHA and the NHS is to speak to your child in the language you’re most comfortable in. A grandmother chatting in rich Hokkien beats a parent forcing stiff English for tadika’s sake.
How to count words: when your doctor or therapist asks how many words your 2-year-old has, count across languages. “Susu”, “milk” and “paal” all count. A trilingual toddler with 15 words in each of three languages is not a late talker with 15 words.
Bilingualism also doesn’t excuse a real delay. A child missing the milestones in every language they hear needs checking like any other child.
How to encourage babbling and first words
None of this needs equipment, just face-to-face time with the TV off.
- Copy their sounds back. Baby says “ba”, you say “ba”, then wait. The NHS recommends repeating your baby’s sounds back to them because it teaches listening and turn-taking.
- Wait longer than feels natural. Count to five in your head after you speak. Babies need time to answer, and a talking toy or an eager adult fills that gap.
- Name what they’re looking at. “Kucing! Black kucing.” Short, repeated, and about whatever has their attention right now, not what you planned to teach.
- Read together every day. WHO encourages reading and storytelling with a caregiver for under-5s, and recommends no screen time for babies under 1 or for 1-year-olds, and no more than an hour a day at 2. Books with a repeating line and something to touch, like That’s Not My Parrot, give pre-talkers easy chances to join in. From about 1, a first-words book like First 100 Words works well as a pointing-and-naming game. Read it in your home language if that isn’t English.
- Keep the puting for sleep. The NHS suggests offering a dummy only at sleep time and aiming to stop completely by 12 months.
- Use simple toys that need you. A three-ring stacker like the PlanToys First Stacking Ring gives a 1-year-old natural reasons to say “more”, “again” or “nak”. Our toys for speech delay guide explains why toys that talk get in the way, and the Montessori toys guide has more simple toys by age.
What this looks like in a Malaysian week
A realistic week for a 9-month-old with two working parents and a grandparent or helper at home:
- Mornings, 10 minutes: sound copying during the nappy change. Baby babbles, adult copies and waits.
- Mealtimes: name the food in whatever language the person feeding speaks. “Nasi. Ikan. Nak lagi?” Pause before giving more, so baby has a turn.
- Weekday evenings, 15 minutes: one board book after the bath, phones away.
- Weekend mall or mamak trip: narrate instead of handing over the phone. “Bus! Big bus. Bye-bye bus.”
- Balik kampung: let the cousins and grandparents talk to the baby in their own dialect.
Signs of speech delay worth acting on
ASHA estimates that 10–20% of 2-year-olds are late talkers, usually defined as fewer than 50 words and no two-word phrases by 24 months. Boys are about three times as likely as girls to be late talkers. Between 50% and 70% catch up by late preschool or school age, which is the grain of truth in “boys talk late, tunggu saja.” The problem is that nobody can tell at 18 or 24 months which children will catch up, and some delays are the first sign of hearing loss, autism or a wider developmental delay.
For telling a simple late talker apart from early signs of autism, read our guide to speech delay vs autism. For what assessment and therapy cost in Malaysia, see speech therapy costs, and for government and private programmes, the early intervention guide.
For more on talking, late talkers and the tools therapists use, start at the speech and language hub.