How do children acquire pronunciation?
The basic insight that we gain from children’s developing pronunciation is that there are difficult sounds and easy sounds, and difficult and easy distinctions between sounds. We can tell which are which by looking at what children do, because children cannot articulate what their vocal tracts are not developed enough to tackle yet. We can for example safely conclude that, for the ‘fis-phenomenon’ child above, the sound at the end of the word ‘fish’ is more difficult than the sound at the end of the word fis. Children start using speech sounds when they start babbling. The sounds that they use in babbling are easy sounds and these will be the sounds children will use in their first utterances too. Children usually replace difficult sounds with sounds that are easier for them to articulate, or they may drop difficult sounds altogether. They may call Sam “Tam”, for example, and they may want to “pee” potatoes with a potato-“peewah”, or ask you why strawberries are “wed” and not “boo”. Al
The basic insight that we gain from children’s developing pronunciation is that there are difficult sounds and easy sounds, and difficult and easy distinctions between sounds. We can tell which are which by looking at what children do, because children cannot articulate what their vocal tracts are not developed enough to tackle yet. We can for example safely conclude that, for the ‘fis-phenomenon’ child above, the sound at the end of the word fish is more difficult than the sound at the end of the word fis. Children start using speech sounds when they start babbling. The sounds that they use in babbling are easy sounds and these will be the sounds children will use in their first utterances too. Children usually replace difficult sounds with sounds that are easier for them to articulate, or they may drop difficult sounds altogether. They may call Sam ‘Tam’, for example, and they may want to ‘pee’ potatoes with a potato-‘peewah’, or ask you why strawberries are ‘wed’ and not ‘boo’. Alth
