Cross-linguistic studies can provide information about general and language specific features of language development, but relatively few such studies are available in the literature. The main aim of the present study was to investigate, from a cross-linguistic perspective, the roles of the internal factor of gender and the external factors of birth order and parental education level on development of language in 2-year-old children. We examined 351 children growing up in the three European language contexts of Croatian (N=104), Estonian (N=141) and Finnish (N=106).Information on lexical skills and word combination ability was collected using the short form of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories, and the influence of background factors on these aspects of language development was investigated. No significant differences were found in lexical skills or word combination ability among the three language groups. These aspects of language development varied significantly with gender, but not with the external factors. Our findings suggest that internal factors may influence early language development more than external factors.