While speech sounds develop across a wide range of ages, developmental norms provide guidelines regarding the typical age at which children pronounce each sound. Comprehensive research (McLeod & Crowe, 2018) indicates that the vast majority of children (75-85%) develop speech sounds according to the chart below. Using this chart, you can determine which sounds your child is expected to produce. For example, a 3-year, 2-month old child (age 3;2) would be expected to pronounce the “b” sound, as in “bye” and it would not be atypical for this child to have difficulty pronouncing “r”, as in “red”.
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75-85% of children produce this sound by age: (years;months) |
English Consonant Sounds |
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3;0 |
m, n, h, p, w, d, b, f, k, g, “ng” (as in “ring”) |
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4;0 |
y, t, s, l, sh |
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5;0 |
ch, z, r, z, j, v |
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6;0 |
voiced “th” (as in “that”) |
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7;0 |
voiceless “th” (as in “think”) |
McLeod, S., & Crowe, K. (2018). Children's consonant acquisition in 27 languages: A cross-linguistic review. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 27(4), 1546-1571. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_AJSLP-17-0100