Phonetic (articulatory) alterations in speech are characterized by a difficulty in performing the correct movement of a given phoneme.   The child says “soes” instead of “shoes”. In this example, the motor act of protruding the lips forward (beak shape) was not performed properly to speak the sound of the letter “sh” correctly. The child then substituted inadequately the phoneme of the word "shoes". In this same example, we can also analyze a phonological alteration that would be the difficulty or immaturity in the phonological awareness of these two sounds of the letters “s” and “sh”. The child does not make the specific auditory discrimination between the sounds of these letters “sh” and “s”, and as a consequence makes the emission incorrect. 

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Children should correctly pronounce these two phonemes mentioned above around 4 years old and should be able to master these sounds in English when they are 5 years old. We generally advise parents of bilingual and multilingual children to allow 6 months more than the average age for the acquisition of speech sounds.

  

Below you will be able to check if your child is properly developing his speech. Note here that this scale DO NOT substitute any type of standardized speech language assessment. If your child shows a delay in more than one sound a further evaluation is extremelly recommended!

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The average ages for "mastering" (not acquistion) the following sounds are shown below.

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2 years

p-sound: piano               b-sound: book            m- sound: mom 

h-sound: hammer;        n-sound: nose  

3 years

 d- sound:  dishes           t-sound: teeth            k-sound: Ketchup

 G-sound:  guitar            w-sound: watch        

4 years

f-sound: feather           v-sound: vacuum           y-sound: yogurt

ch-sound: chair             j-sound: pajamas           l-sound: ladder         

5 years

sh-sound: shovel           s-sound: snake          

6 years

r-sound: rabbit        z-sound: zebra

r-blend sounds: brush ; dresser        l-blend sound: black ; fly

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In the medical prescription it should be mentioned in German Aussprachstörung or Phonetische-Phonologische Störung.

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