Baby's First Words and Other Speech Development Milestones

10. Verbal Development Terms

Though people often use the terms language delay and speech delay interchangeably, they have different meanings. Language is understanding information that another person is communicating. Speech includes the way humans articulate the sounds and words in language and verbalize it. Language delays mean that a child expresses words but can put together only a few words at a time. A child who has a speech delay may have the ability to use words and phrases, but they are hard to understand.