Telegraphic speech is the early stage of language production in which children speak in short, content-rich phrases that omit most function words and inflections. It typically appears between roughly eighteen and thirty months of age.

Utterances such as “more juice,” “daddy go,” or “big truck” convey clear meaning while leaving out articles, auxiliary verbs, and grammatical endings. The child’s vocabulary and conceptual understanding are advancing rapidly; the grammatical system is still being constructed. Parents and caregivers often expand these telegraphic utterances into full sentences, providing implicit models of adult syntax.

The stage is named for its resemblance to the concise style of telegrams, which also omitted inessential words to save cost. It is a universal feature of typical language development and gives way gradually to longer, more fully grammatical sentences. Persistent telegraphic speech beyond the expected age can be a sign of language delay.

Two or three content words, spoken with intention, carry the communicative load of this early stage.