Speech sound development

Here is a guide to how children’s speech usually develops. Speech development may vary across languages.

Early, middle and later speech sounds

This helps us think about the order that children learn to say speech sounds.

Early (18 mths – 3 yrs)

m n y b w d p h

Middle (2 – 6 yrs)

t ng (talking) k g f v ch j

Later (3 – 8 yrs)

sh zh (measure) l r s zth (think) th (that)

The chart above describes the approximate order that children’s speech sounds develop. Speech sounds develop from the time the child starts using words until the early years at school. Although the age range extends to 8 years, most children will be using these sounds earlier than that¹.

Speech intelligibility

Children’s speech generally gets easier to understand as they get older. Here's a guide²:

• by 2 years of age children can be understood by familiar adults most of the time
• by 3 years of age children can be understood by unfamiliar adults most of the time
• by 4 years of age children can be understood by unfamiliar adults almost all of the time
• by 5 years of age children can be understood by unfamiliar adults all of the time

Tips

• show your child that you are interested in what they say, not how they say it
• help your child to learn how to say tricky sounds by repeating them correctly as naturally as possible; for example, if your child says "bish" and you say "yes it's a big fish, isn't it?"
• get face to face with your child so that they can watch the way you say words