At around 2–4 months, babies produce soft, vowel-like sounds — particularly back vowels and velar consonants like /k/ and /g/ — in a stage called Cooing. These sounds resemble the sounds made by doves ('coo'). Babbling (consonant-vowel combinations like 'ba-ba') starts at around 6–8 months. The Holophrastic stage (single words = whole utterances) begins around 12 months. Telegraphic speech emerges around 18–24 months.