17 month old boy not one word

My fourth child of five is almost 17 months old and doe snot say one single word, that we can either understand or even imitates. He sounds only 'baby' for his baby brother by using his throat, likeclearing it, but it is a clear gug-gug sounds with the pitch as well. He waled at 9 months, normal developmetn elsewhere. He hears well, VERY if not over energetic, knows what we're talking about most of the time "time for a bath, want a bath?" off he runs to the bathroom. Get your car" and he gets it. etc, and he has recently started to point to things, but only babbles and doesn't make any attempt to do single sounds, look at the bird, bird, b - b- when we're trying to be clear. Our oldest son needed grommets and was behind for ages, and now at nearly 12 still slurs sometimes and is rather unclear. Our daughter who is 5 took ages to develop understanding and speech and is still behind for her age but quickly catching up. Our 8 year old boy  if anything was teh exact opposite - very quick to talk and catch on to things. our 17 month old has heaps of stimulation at our atempts to help him, every opportunity but nothing. Mum-mum-mum came out a few times before he was 1, but disappeared quickly. We did speech therapy with our oldest and it didn't relay help. What can we do? Just keep going and hope for the best?

[daycaremommy]

My nephew did this and come to find out, it was just his older siblings doing whatever he wanted so he never had to speak.  Try repeating the word and having him make an attempt  before getting him something.  Hopefully, it is just as simple as this.  If not, talk to your doctor and maybe call your town and get him in for a free speech evaluation.  Good luck!

[falafal0]

thankyou for replying. Yes, we're going to take him to a pediatrician plus get hearing tests like you said. we do think it's what he's hearing, not the fact that he can't hear. We just don't him to get any furter behind. His older siblings don't give him what he wants - it turned into a family effort to pronounce thing s and to try to get any attempt out of him before he gets things. When he's thirsty and sees a drink, he just yells, but we say the usual, drink? you want a drink, okay, here's your drink - just repeating words over and over and letting him know that word goes with that thing. Because of our experience with our ldest, dh is reluctant to go through the same thing again with speech therapists etc. so we're going private straight away...thank you for advice.