FAQ - Am I counting a bilingual toddler's words correctly?

I frequently have parents write to me saying something along these lines: “My bilingual child has X amount of words. Should I be concerned?”

I always answer with these 3 steps:

1. Make sure you’re counting the words correctly. I often see parents and professionals under-count a toddler’s vocabulary, often leading to an unnecessary concern.

   • Does this count as a word? and this What word types count?

   • Bilingual First Words Tracker - Age by age can help you monitor and keep track of a bi/multilingual child’s words stage by stage starting at 12 month and ending at 24.

   • Bilingual First Words Tracker - General can help you tally up a bil/multilingual child’s words at a specific point in time, regardless of age or stage.

2. Count every word in each language. If a child has the same word in each language, it counts as separate words. This is called “total vocabulary.”

   • This research study compared the vocabulary size of monolingual children with bilingual children. They compared two groups. Group 1: Monolingual Total Vocabulary (all words) compared to Bilingual Conceptual Vocabulary (all words but overlapping ones only counted as one). Group 2: Monolingual Total Vocabulary (all words) compared to Bilingual Total Vocabulary (all words). They found that when you didn’t count every word, typically developing bilingual children looked behind than their monolingual peers (aka. had LESS words). But when they gave credit for ALL the words, typically developing bilingual children met milestones at about the same rate as their monolingual peers.

3. Understand expected language milestones.

   • Bilingual children develop early language milestones at about the same rate as monolingual children (1). So a typically developing bilingual child should not be behind their monolingual peers when counting ALL their words.

   • When looking at developmental milestones, make sure you understand whether the recommendations/guidelines are talking about the average (number of words 50% of children that age should be saying) or the milestone (number of words 75% or 90% of children that specific age should be saying). These are the guidelines I like to see considering my professional experience and interpretation of the data.

   • Remember that language development happens in a range. Some kids develop it earlier than most of their peers, some along with most of their peers, and some slightly after most of their peers. If the bilingual child is *significantly* behind most of their peers, please consult with a speech-language pathologist knowledgeable in bilingual language development.

This is tricky! If this blog post and resources didn’t throughly answer your question, don’t hesitate to reach out to me at speak@laleotherapy.

(1) Kohnert, K., Ebert, K. D., & Pham, G. T. (2020). Language disorders in bilingual children and adults. Plural Publishing.