Gibberish? Or Not?

I've had a one year old dropping in this week. His family lives in China and they're back for the summer. Most kids this age jabber and make unintelligible noises. However, with this one, I can't stop thinking that he's probably just speaking Mandarin, and that if I only knew how to speak that, I'd know exactly what he wants. I keep listening to every little sound he makes to see if any of them are repeated or could possibly be Chinese words. Not that I would know if they really were, but still. It's interesting.