A main source for the ages
Share of children combining words, by age, in 12 languages: our count from Wordbank v3.4
MyHappyBub (analysis of Wordbank open data) ยท 2026
- Children
- About 89,000 parents' answers (about 36,000 in American English)
- Where
- Families speaking 12 languages, including English, Norwegian, Danish, Spanish, French, Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese
- Ages
- 16 to 36 months
- How
- Our own count from parents' answers on the word lists in the open Wordbank collection
- What it found
- In American English, half of children were combining words by 19 months, 3 in 4 by 22, and nearly all (95 in 100) by 30. In 11 other languages, half were combining words somewhere between 17 and 22 months.
- Limits
- Based on parents' reports. Each month is a different group of children. The toddler word lists start at 16 months, when about 3 in 10 children are already combining words.