hello my son is nealy 2 and he is still not talking age apropret he says mum dad and nan and mostl babls sound for exampal (you give him a drink and he will bable sound that sound like he is trying to say thankyou like huming but not actshwally sasying it. alot of pepole are saying his older siblings are talking for him i dont think so as thay are at school 6 hours mon to fri and he is at home with me only but if thay where how do i recnise this and stop it?. can you help.

I think some kids takes longer to talk than others. My cousin is almost 2 years and ive never really hear him say anything besides "nana" for banana. Have you considered having a speech therapist? Reading to him is a good idea, they have those books for kids that has very simple words with pictures that may help him out. Try using really simple words like "hi", "bye", "yes", "no" with him and he will eventually pick it up.

my friends son didn't learn to talk very well because he needed tubes put in his ears. Most kids who need tubes have crhonic ear aches/infections, but some don't. What happens with the fluid is that the pressure build up in his ears makes it difficult for the ear drum to distinguish consenants. He could here vowls and strong consenants but but the quiter letters like w, L, S, Y, and so on he couldn't hear so he never learned to say them. You should talk to pediatrician about it and she may or may not suggest taking him in to see a speach therapist. But if there is a problem you want to catch it as soon as possible so he's ready for kindergarten on time.

Do you speak baby talk to him?
It was pretty recently proven that baby talk ("motherese," the professionals call it) is GOOD for a child's speech development. It breaks down the big, scary grammar points into something a child's "Language Acquisition Device" (a theory by Noam Chomsky, not necessarily proven) can handle.
Some children do acquire speech slower than others. The babbling is where he's working out usable phoneme strings ... ie, trying to see what sounds put together in what ways will get your attention or get a reaction.
Does he know his toy's names? Like a teddy bear, or a puppy? It's a good place to start to encourage him.
I doubt highly that his siblings are "talking for him," and I don't really see how it would work.

This is true. I'd give it more time before I started getting to worried.

thankyou for all your replys i was spryesed at how quckly you all where
my husband and i have dicided to tack him to a speach therpist if he is still not tallking by july 2008 and we are going to have his hearing tested by a hearing speshlest he dose get ear infeshions ofen so we are also going to talk to our dr and peditrishion again.
we never talk baby talk to him and we have always asked others to talk to him normaly aswall we also dont alow any tv showes like tellytubbys thankyou again

to annie i didnot even think of that my sister had a hole in her ear drum and had to have gromets ill have him cheaked out asap thankyou

No, no, baby talk is a GOOD thing! Maybe at this stage it is too late for it to help, (I'm not a language expert yet, so I don't know) but any speech therapist who tries to tell you that baby talk is bad for your child is outdated in the extreme.
He has to have verbal stimuli that is simple enough for him to process in order to learn it. Imagine walking into an upper-division Spanish class without being exposed to any instruction. A child has to learn how to speak his or her language without any help or translation; it's the least we can do to make it easier on them.