3yo speech

[DevaMajka]

Just wanted to make sure that my 3yo's (actually 3yr 3mos) speech is "normal" or at least nothing to stress about.

He knows lots of words, uses complex sentences, and attempts to repeat even big words. So if I say "oh it's impossible!" He'll say "Why is it impobbible?" or something like that (because "why" is his favorite word. lol)- if he says it again, his pronunciation improves.
His receptive language is totally fine, there's no doubt in my mind. He talks all the frickin time! lol

So all that seems totally normal to me. But his pronunciation of some words has me wondering a little bit (but not really worrying). He doesn't say "r" sounds at all. He also doesn't pronounce "th" or some other double consonants.

Here are some words I just asked him to say, and how he said them:
Cat = cat
lion = lion
fish = fis
Bath = bas
car = ca (don't know how to write it- kinda like a New York pronunciation. lol)
Kangaroo = kangawoo (the kanga part was right)
chicken = ticken
stop = sop

People can understand most of what he says, but occasionally not. Dp and I understand the vast majority of what he says.

He didn't start talking until 21 mos.

[LynnS6]

Totally normal. Clusters (st, cl, etc.) are harder and later. "Th", "Ch" and "dg" are all later sounds, as are r/l. "Sh" and "s" are highly variable.

This is a good site describing the stages/processes in speech development:
http://www.speech-language-therapy.com/acquisition.html

[DevaMajka]

Thank you! Exactly what I wanted. Off to read the article.

I did just ask ds to say "impossible" and he said "inpossible" very clearly right, except for the n sound instead of m.

of course, he does say "am-ies" or "amalies" for animals. I do notice that he used to use the y/ies sounds at the end of a lot of words where they didn't belong, in place of certain sounds. That's getting less and less often though, so I suppose that wouldn't be a concern regardless.

[LynnS6]

OK, this will fall under the 'more than you really ever wanted to know category.'

am-ies or amalies for animals is very common. It's known as "weak syllable deletion" - weak syllables = unstressed syllables. It's most common in English to omit the ones at the beginnings of words (e.g., 'tar' for "guitar" or as my son used to say "cycling" instead of "recycling"), but it's not uncommon to do it in the middle of 3 syllable words either. So "efant" for "elephant" is pretty common, for example.

The "ies/-y" ending is making the pronunciation easier for him by helping him resyllabify the words. For example:
Dog = consonant-vowel-consonant. Ending a syllable in a consonant is a bit trickier than ending it in a vowel, and it takes more fine motor skills.

But, if you add the -ie to it and make it "doggie" then you have:
Do.ggie - consonant-vowel (first syllable) consonant-vowel (second syllable), and are thus ending each syllable in a vowel. That's a preferred word structure for most children to CVC or CCVC ("stop") or CCVCC ("stops"), etc. Some languages don't even permit CVCC or CCVC kinds of words (Japanese, for example).

Any time there's development so that a child is becoming more intelligible, it's rarely a concern. Your son sounds average for a 3 year old. I have one child who was definitely on the low end for pronunciation (no one other than his linguist mom could understand him at 2, few people outside our family could at 3), and then we have one who's got amazing articulation at 3. The range of typically development is pretty wide for pronunciation.

[mummy marja]

That's really interesting, Lynn!
And Deva, your son sounds very similar to mine, who is exactly the same age.

[sebandg'smama]

Thanks for posting this topic.
Your replies are invaluable Lynn.

I struggle with knowing if I should take dd(3) to be assessed or just take a wait and see approach.