Does my Child Have a Pronunciation Problem?
A: Children usually experience speech problems when they are learning to speak, for example, a two year old will usually say “uncle” instead of “dudu”. There is a pattern to speech development. As children get older, they gradually acquire more speech sounds, improve their pronunciation clarity, and become more standardized in their pronunciation. If a child’s speech development is not in line with his/her age level, or if he/she has abnormal pronunciation errors, he/she has a Speech Sound Disorder (SSD).
A: Pronunciation problems have complex causes. Even if two children have the same pronunciation errors, the causes may be different. The following are some of the causes of pronunciation problems.
- Slow development of the phonological system to produce age-appropriate sounds accurately.
- Weak oral-muscular coordination. The oral muscles do not have sufficient stability, strength, range of motion or coordination to produce the fine oral movements required for pronunciation.
- Functional problems with the oral muscles; the oral muscles have sufficient stability, strength, range of motion and coordination to perform non-verbal movements, but cannot be used in speech. For example, the child can control the up and down movement of the tongue tip but fails to pronounce the /l/ sound accurately, pronouncing “凉” as “羊”.
- Oral structural defects (e.g., cleft lip and palate, short tongue tie)
- Oral sensory problems (e.g., oral hypoallergenia, oral allergy)
- Neurological problems resulting in deficits in oral function (e.g., prosopagnosia)
A: Phonological disorders are one of the most common communication disorders in children. According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), 8-9% of children in the U.S. have dysarthria. In Australia, 3.4% of four-year-olds have speech impairment. In Hong Kong, there is no data on the prevalence of speech and language disorders in children, but a local study in 2021 showed that children with speech and language disorders are one of the core clients of local speech therapists. The survey interviewed 102 local speech therapists. 98% of the respondents indicated that they were working with children aged 2-16 years old with speech impairment, and 18.6% of the respondents indicated that the number of cases with speech impairment accounted for more than 40% of the total number of cases.
A: There are many types of pronunciation errors, here are some of the more common ones.
- Deafening: “跑” -> “飽” and “跳” -> “吊”.
- Plosiveization: “手” → “豆”, “花” → “巴”.
- Tongue fronting: “橋” → “條”, “狗” → “豆”.
- ongue protrudes when pronouncing /s/: the tip of the tongue is placed between the upper and lower rows of teeth when pronouncing “three”.
- Omission of compound vowels: “快”→“化”、“膠”→“家”.
A: Vernacular accent is not a speech impediment. Children’s phonological learning is affected by the language environment and the language spoken at home. For example, children who come from homes where Mandarin is the home language often omit the endings in Cantonese (“san” → “sha”) because there is no /-m/ endings in the phonological system of Mandarin, so this kind of inaccurate pronunciation is not considered a speech impediment. Since the /-m/ ending does not exist in the phonological system of Mandarin, this kind of inaccurate pronunciation will not be regarded as a speech impediment. However, if a pronunciation error occurs in two languages at the same time, such as pronouncing “高” (Cantonese /gou1/, Putonghua /gao1/) as “刀” (Cantonese /dou1/, Putonghua /dao1/), it is very likely to be a speech impediment. This is probably a phonetic barrier.
A: Slackness is not a speech impediment. Lazy sounds refer to slurring or simplifying certain sounds, such as pronouncing “你” (n sound) as “李” (l sound), or pronouncing “恒生銀行” (Hang Seng Bank) as “痕身銀寒” (痕身銀寒). “.
A: Pronunciation problems can be caused by many factors, and “tongue sticking” is only one of them, so it does not necessarily mean that there is “tongue sticking”. The so-called “tongue root” refers to the “tongue ligament” (the strip of tissue underneath the head of the tongue that connects to the oral cavity), and “tongue sticking” refers to the shortness of the tongue ligament, which affects the range of movement of the tongue, thus causing pronunciation problems. This leads to pronunciation problems. If a child has “tongue-lash”, the tip of his tongue will be heart-shaped when he sticks out his tongue. Pronunciation problems can be caused by a variety of factors, including slow development of the phonological system, weak coordination of the oral muscles, deficiencies in oral structure, deficiencies in oral perception, etc. Short tongue ligature is one of the congenital oral structure problems.
A: Parents should follow the speech therapist’s advice to carry out home training with their children. The training process should not be rushed, if the children are learning to pronounce words accurately at this stage, we should not force the children to pronounce sounds accurately in “daily conversations”. The training process is gradual. In addition, parents should avoid over-correcting the child’s pronunciation or interrupting the child’s speech because of wrong pronunciation, as this will greatly reduce the quality of parent-child communication.