Yeah- that's what the studies tend to show- i don't know heaps about it, and it's talking about 'averge' age. So some kids would be faster than that. And the story is that it;s not that they are 'slower' as such... not 'delayed' they are just following a different path if you get me- so the may talk later, and they can do some funny little language mixing things too, but by 3 i think (or something similar) they are either on par- or sometimes better off than their mono-lingual peers. BUT this isn't the area i work in, so i'm not up on the LATEST research...
Ok- Just did some reading on google scholar (i don't have anything better at hand!) And it appears that in some ways it;s more that there;s an appearance of delay if you get me. SO the milestones for first words, and two word combinations and vocabulary size are all the same- BUT the vocabulary size is made up of words from both languages- so half in each language- not double. So- say at 18 months you have 50 words (for example) Hamish will have 50 english words, where a bilingual child may have 25 english words and 25 words in the other language. So when speaking in one language may seem 'delayed' in a way. The article talked about the importance of looking at both languages at once when assessing...