Speech Sounds in English

Page in progress. More sounds coming soon.

 
 

Click on a letter for word lists and activity ideas.

Above are commonly mispronounced sounds in English. Vowels and some consonants are not included.

Speech Sounds by Age

2-3 Years: p, b, m, d, n, h, t, k, g, w, ng, f, y

4 Years: l, j, ch, s, v, sh, z

5 Years: r, zh, th (voiced)

6 Years: th (voiceless)

*McLeod, S. & Crowe, K. (2018)

Speech Sound Disorders

Speech sound disorders can be organic or functional in nature.

Organic (developmental or acquired)

  • Motor/neurological

    • Dysarthria (execution)

    • Apraxia (planning)

  • Structural

    • Cleft palate or other orofacial anomalies

    • Structural deficits due to trauma or surgery

  • Sensory/Perceptual

    • Hearing impairment

Functional (no known cause)

  • Articulation (motor aspects)

  • Phonology (linguistic aspects)

*ASHA.org

What are Voiced and Voiceless Pairs

Two sounds can be paired together because they are made the same way, with one difference, our voice. The muscles in our mouth move the same way to make both sounds except our voice is “turned on” for the voiced sound. This means we vibrate or move our vocal folds as air passes through them to make a sound.

A list of voiced and voiceless pairs in English.

Voiced / Voiceless

b / p

d / t

g / k

v / f

z / s

j / ch

th (there) / th (think)

s (measure) / sh (she)

Treatment for Speech Sound Disorders

Speech sound targets and a treatment approach should be determined by a licensed speech-language pathologist. These may follow an articulation approach, a phonological/language-based approach, or a combination of both.

Common treatments include, but are not limited to…

  • Articulation intervention

  • Cycles approach

  • Minimal pairs approach

  • Complexity approach

  • Natural speech intelligibility intervention

  • Speech sound perception training

  • Core vocabulary approach

For details and a complete list visit the Amerian Speech-Language-Hearing Association website.

*Sources

“ASHA.” American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, www.asha.org/.

McLeod, S. & Crowe, K. (2018). Children’s consonant acquisition in 27 languages: A cross-linguistic review. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. doi:10.1044/2018_AJSLP-17-0100. Available from: https://ajslp.pubs.asha.org/article.aspx?articleid=2701897