Hello! My 18 month old son doesn't use many true words, although he has mastered baby talk, gibbersih, etc. He is a chatterbox and we wish we knew what he was saying, because he is "saying" a lot. He does not seem interested in imitating language, rather just out of the blue he seems to say words completely. Has anyone else experienced this?

Hi,

Yes! I am going through the exact same thing with my 18 month old son, except that my son does try to imitate some of the words we tell him.
I think what we are going through is quite common from other moms who I have talked to who have sons the same age.
Boys typically develop language skills later than girls.
My son seems to know many, many, words but it is quite difficult to understand what he is saying sometimes becasue he will only say the first syllable of the word. And he seems to understand everything I say to him.
He still does not say the word "NO" but will turn his head from side to side when he doesn't want to do something. When I ask him to say the word "No", he will just say "NNNNNN"and end with a scream, he can't really get the "O" out.
He also says "SA" for stars and squirrels. He says "MAYMA" for mailman but a lot of what he says is indecipherable.
I wouldn't worry.......

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the advice I was always told was to reply using the words he tried to say, like if he says ' caw' you say "yes thats a CAR" So in everyday talk tell him what things are, as your cooking supper, 'Pot, pan , carrots' etc. when your driving 'car, truck, lights etc.' Things like that.My oldest daughter always said 'yights' and I would always say back to her "lets turn off(on) the LIGHTS" it seems to help ,so in short don't talk baby talk ,pronounce back each word proper and I'm sure he pick it up eventually,

Thank you to both of you. I enjoy having other to bounce questions off of.

Actually, that is great advice Rychemac gave and my husband and I both give positive reinforcement when he tries saying a word. We will say "yes that's right when he tries saying a word and repeat the word the proper way.
My son loves to point to different objects and tries to say what it is and he will say the word over and over in his baby talk until we say "yes that's right, that's a so and so"(saying the word correctly).
I also will constantly show objects to my son and tell him what the object is or explain what I am doing ( as I am cooking, etc).

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