Abstract
BackgroundLiterature only mentioned a few kinds of research that did study the development of the speech sounds of the Colloquial Egyptian Arabic dialect. Moreover, these studies focused on describing the phonological processes that children undergo in early childhood rather than describing the exact time of acquisition of these sounds. Besides, no study involved a statistically enough sample size of children across the different age ranges. Thus, this study aimed to explore the development of the Arabic phonemes among 360 typically developing Egyptian children who speak the CEA dialect, between the ages of 1.6 years and ≤ 7.4 years.ResultsThe results of a 93-picture-naming test of children were analyzed. A phoneme is considered acquired when 90% of the children could properly utter the target phoneme in all word positions and mastered when 100% of children could correctly pronounce the target phoneme in all word positions. The results revealed that by the age of 1.6–2.0 years, the 6 long vowels of the CEA dialect, besides the /h/,/ʔ/, /b/, /w/, /j/, /m/, and /n/ were mastered. /t/ and /d/ sounds were mastered by the age of 2.6 years followed by /l/ sound by the age of 3.0 years. Then, /ħ/, /ʕ/ sounds were mastered followed by /k/, and /g/ at the age of 3.0 and 3.6 years, respectively. At the age of 5.0 years, /f/ sound was mastered, then /x / and /ʃ/ sounds were mastered by the age of 4.6 years, followed by /s/, /sˁ/, /tˁ/, /dˁ/. By the age of 5.6 and 6.0 years, /ɣ/, /r/, and /z/ were mastered. The /q/, /θ/, /ð/, and /ðˁ/ sounds were mastered by the age of 6.0–6.6 years. This study revealed that fricative sounds developed before the stop sounds and front stops before the back stops, and emphatic Arabic sounds were the last to develop at the school age (> 5 years).ConclusionsThis study presented a chart of the development of the Arabic phonemes of the CEA to be used as a guide to decide upon the correct trimming to start articulatory therapy for children with articulation and/or phonological disorders.
Highlights
Literature only mentioned a few kinds of research that did study the development of the speech sounds of the Colloquial Egyptian Arabic dialect
The analysis of the scores of the picturenaming test indicated that all children between 1.6 and < 2 years mastered the pronunciation of all the 6 Egyptian Arabic long vowels (/æ:/, /ɑ:/, /i:/, /e:/, /u:/, /o:/) as well as the consonants sounds (/b/ /h/, /w/, /j/, /ʔ/, /m/, /n/) in all word positions. /t/ and /d/ sounds are considered phonemes to be acquired by the age of 1.5 to < 2 years as 90% of children in this group pronounced them correctly
By the age of 6 to < 6.6 years, all the Arabic phonemes of the Colloquial Egyptian Arabic (CEA) dialect were mastered by the participated children
Summary
Literature only mentioned a few kinds of research that did study the development of the speech sounds of the Colloquial Egyptian Arabic dialect These studies focused on describing the phonological processes that children undergo in early childhood rather than describing the exact time of acquisition of these sounds. The phonemic structure of any language consists of a set of sounds/phonemes; basically, consonants, and vowels These sounds/phonemes are arranged to produce the different words of this language and used to convey meaning either by speech or writing. The acquisition and the mastery of a language speech sounds is a fundamental part of the children’s phonological development as well as speech development Regards speech development, it is associated with the development of the speech–motor skills required to produce accurate speech sounds and words. The regional and cultural differences influence the way people pronounce phonemes among the different languages and dialects all over the world’s countries
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