These questions, while usually asked with good intentions, either can reassure parents that their child is developing in a typical manner, or can cause worry that the child has a potential developmental delay. In the area of speech and language development, the range of typical development can be vast. Both are considered age-appropriate. Just as in other areas of development, children's speech and language can develop at slower or faster rates than expected.
Children are, after all, individuals.
What is important is that the child shows continuous language growth. Some parents report that their child said very few words until they turned two or three years old, after which they started talking fluently. Research has suggested that about half of all toddlers who are only using single words at the age of two will catch up to their peers by age three. Often, it turns out that this child in fact did have a language delay and could have benefitted from early intervention. It can be a very frustrating situation for everyone involved.