I have found some interesting facts about language and children's language and speech learning that you may not have heard before. Here are some fun tidbits for you to think about and share with others.

It's no surprise that the many names for mama/mom/mother and papa/dad/father in the world's languages usually start with speech sounds that are easier for a very young child to pronounce. These sounds include m, p, n, d, f in words such as mama, maman, mere, mor, mae, madre, mutter, moeder, papa, papa, pere, dada, nana, pai, padre, far, vati, vader..

There are 44 sounds and 26 letters in the English language. A word can have more letters than sounds. For example, the word hat has 3 letters and 3 sounds, but the word hatch has 5 letters and 3 sounds (h + a + ch)..

In terms of describing a child's speech difficulties, it is preferable that you describe the sounds rather than the letters your child has trouble saying. For example, your child may have trouble saying the /k/ sound; this is more accurate than saying your child can't say the c or the k letter..

When children misarticulate or mispronounce words, they truly believe they are producing the words correctly. If you say back to the child her error production, she will probably reject your production as "wrong" or wrinkle up her nose at your error. For example, if a child says, "Dide" for slide, and if you repeat to her, "Dide?" she is likely to shake her head or say, "No," or "No...DIDE!!" In my many years of work with young children, I haven't met a child who accepts the repetition of his error production as correct or to be what he said. Therefore, I believe that this is a motor production error and not an auditory perceptual problem. It is not that the child "mishears" what is said to him.  His phonological rule system may be immature or disordered, or his motor planning "wiring" may be scrambled, but this is not an issue of "hearing" or "perceiving" sounds correctly or incorrectly.

Babies who are developing their language and speech skills normally actually babble all of the sounds of all of the world's languages. As they hear the language spoken around them, the sounds needed for production of that particular language are reinforced and retained; the sounds not used in the language they hear drop out of babbled production. Children are "pre-wired" to learn language and speech-any language-and are not destined by genetics to learn just the language they are born into. The environment shapes that language outcome. A child born in Japan of Japanese parents learns to speak Japanese. If that same child were raised from a young age in Greece by Greek adoptive parents/caregivers, she would speak Greek perfectly..

Mary Lou B. Johnson, M.S., CCC-SLP, is a speech-language pathologist with over 33 years experience working with children and their families at The Children's Hospital, Denver. In her eBook, How To Help Your Child Learn to Talk Better in Everyday Activities, Mary Lou shares with readers the information, insights, and ideas that she has shared with parents in her practice. Mary Lou hopes that her eBook will enable a parent to gain new ideas and more confidence in her abilities to help her child acquire new speech-language skills..

The reader can see the topics covered in the eBook by viewing the Table of Contents on the home page of the web site at http://helpyourchildspeak.com.

Mary Lou is also an entrepreneur whose companies sell printed wall decor products. Check them out at http://getBiggies.com.

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