How many words should a 1-year-old say? At 12 to 15 months, a few.

The short answer

At 12 months, often one or two words, and one of them may be the name they call you. The CDC’s 12-month checklist names three communication skills: a child waves “bye-bye,” calls a parent “mama” or “dada” or another special name, and understands “no,” pausing or stopping when you say it.¹ The speech milestone lists from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) and the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) place one or two words, such as “hi,” “dog,” “mama” or “dada,” around the first birthday.^{2, 3}

By 15 months, the CDC adds that a child tries to say one or two words besides “mama” or “dada,” like “ba” for ball or “da” for dog.⁴ Each checklist item is something at least three in four children would be expected to do by that age, not the average age it first appears. The 15-month checklist itself was added when the lists were revised in 2022.⁵ For an older 1-year-old, our 18-month guide has the next checklist.

Around the number, a wide range

Checklist items mark what most children can do. Real children spread out a long way on either side. The study that first set norms for a widely used parent word checklist, the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories, gathered reports on 1,803 children aged eight to thirty months. It found such extensive variation in when words start and how fast they come that the authors questioned how meaningful the idea of a typical child is.^{7, 8}

Wordbank, an open archive of these checklists pooled from many research projects, shows the same spread.⁸ For American English, on the checklist for babies up to 18 months, parents reported:

• At 12 months (615 children): about four words for the child in the middle. More than a quarter had one word or none, nearly one in five had none yet, and one in ten had about twenty or more.⁸
• At 15 months (284 children): about seventeen words in the middle. More than one in ten still had none, and one in ten had about seventy-five or more.⁸
• At 16 months (881 children): about thirty in the middle, with the bottom tenth at five or fewer and the top tenth above a hundred.⁸

These are parents’ check marks on a long word list, from studies that were not designed to represent every family; Wordbank itself calls them a descriptive picture, not clinical norms. The shape is the useful part: in the second year, wide differences between children are the rule, so one count says little on its own.^{7, 8} Next on the checklist, by 18 months, is three or more words besides “mama” or “dada”; our 18-month guide picks up there.⁹

Understanding and pointing say a lot

What they understand

Children this age typically understand far more than they say. In the same Wordbank data, the middle 12-month-old was reported to understand about sixty words while saying about four.⁸ The checklists look for this. NIDCD’s list for seven months to a year includes understanding words for common things such as “cup,” “shoe” or “juice.”² By 15 months, the CDC lists looking at a familiar object when you name it and following directions given with both a gesture and words: handing you a toy when you hold out your hand and say, “Give me the toy.”⁴

Pointing and other gestures

ASHA lists pointing, waving, and showing or giving objects at 10 to 12 months; the CDC lists pointing to ask for something or to get help at 15 months.^{3, 4} ASHA’s list for 13 to 18 months adds pointing to comment or get information, and long strings of sounds mixed with real words, said with the rise and fall of speech.¹⁰

Gestures are not a sideshow to talking. In a study that followed ten children, many of the things each child first conveyed with a gesture later turned up among their spoken words.¹¹ In another, of fifty-three families, children who used gestures for a wider range of meanings at 14 months scored higher on a vocabulary test at three and a half, even allowing for the words they and their parents used at 14 months. That is a link, not proof that gesturing caused the higher scores.¹²

ASHA’s guidance on late-talking toddlers points the same way: the toddlers who caught up had used more gestures than those who stayed delayed, and understanding is among the best predictors of how late talkers do. Neither guarantees that words will follow on their own, so plenty of pointing is no reason to wait if the words are slow to come.¹³

What helps

Mostly, answering. In a study of forty children, mothers were filmed playing with their babies at 9 and 13 months. How responsive they were, by describing, joining in their play and imitating, predicted the timing of the children’s early language milestones, from first words to first word combinations, beyond what the children’s own early behavior predicted.¹⁴ A stronger test came from a trial that randomly assigned seventy-one families. Parents coached when their babies were 6, 10 and 14 months old used more parentese, the higher, slower, sing-song voice adults use with babies, and more back-and-forth turns; at 18 months, their children had somewhat larger vocabularies.¹⁵

Gestures give you something to answer. In a study of ten children, every mother “translated” her child’s gestures into words, showing how the idea could be said.¹⁶ In everyday terms:

• A word for what they point at. The CDC suggests naming it, then waiting a few seconds to see whether your child makes a sound before handing it over. If they do, “Yes! Cup” answers it.⁴
• The whole word back. When your child says “ba,” “Ball, yes, that’s a ball” answers them and gives them the full word.⁴
• One step more. The CDC’s 12-month example: “ta” gets “Yes, a truck,” and “truck” gets “Yes, that’s a big, blue truck.”¹
• Simple gestures and signs. Pointing, waving and simple signs give your child another way to “talk” to you and show you what they want.⁴
• Talk, songs and books through the day. The CDC’s tip is to keep talking, reading, singing and naming things as the day goes.⁴

Two languages: count both

The milestones are the same however many languages a child hears.⁶ A bilingual child usually knows fewer words in each language than a child learning one, but about the same number when both are counted together.^{6, 17} So leche and milk both go on the list. An evaluation should look at every language your child hears; ASHA says assessment in all languages is needed to tell a language difference from a true communication disorder.¹³ More in our guide to two languages and delay.

When to ask

You do not need a particular count or birthday to ask. The checklists give two plain markers: a name for a parent by 12 months, and one or two other words by 15. If either has not come, if your child has lost skills they once had, or if something else worries you, the CDC’s advice is to act early: talk with your child’s doctor and ask about developmental screening.^{1, 4} A 2023 guide for primary-care doctors, drawn from an American Academy of Pediatrics textbook, lists signs that should lead to an early specialist review. These are among them:¹⁸

• No gestures by 12 months, such as pointing or waving bye-bye.^{1, 18}
• No clear single words by 16 months.
• Little or inconsistent response to sound, at any age.
• Lost words or social skills, at any age. This one is worth a prompt call.¹

Hearing deserves its own mention. Hearing loss can develop after birth, so a passed newborn screen does not settle it, and if you think your child might not hear well, the CDC’s advice is to ask the doctor for a hearing test as soon as possible.¹⁹ A hearing test is often part of a speech and language evaluation, because hearing problems can affect speech and language development.²

In the United States, you can also call your state’s early-intervention program for a child under three and request a free evaluation to see whether your child qualifies for support; no doctor’s referral is needed.²⁰ ASHA’s late-talker guidance covers children from two to four, and the research definition it cites is fewer than fifty words and no two-word combinations at 24 months.¹³ That is no reason to wait for two if something worries you now.¹ Our late-talker guide explains what an evaluation involves.

A word ready for the moment

At this age, Their First Words is a prompt for you. Its First Words stage covers birth to two years, and each card gives you a picture, the written word and a native voice to copy, in any of eight languages, so the word is ready when the moment comes. Then the phone goes down, your child points at the real ball, and the answer is yours. The free words include ball, dog, milk, mama and dada.