Speech Speech Speech is human vocal communication using language. Each language uses phonetic combinations of a limited set of perfectly articulated and individualized vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if they are the same word, e.g., "role" or "hotel"), and using those words in their semantic character as words in the lexicon of a language according to the syntactic constraints that govern lexical words' function in a sentence. In speaking, speakers perform many different intentional speech acts, e.g., informing, declaring, asking, persuading, directing, and
Speech sound disorder Speech sound disorder A speech sound disorder (SSD) is a speech disorder in which some speech sounds (called phonemes) in a child's (or, sometimes, an adult's) language are either not produced, not produced correctly, or are not used correctly. The term protracted phonological development is sometimes preferred when describing children's speech to emphasize the continuing development while acknowledging the delay. Speech sound disorders may be subdivided into two primary types, articulation disorders (also called phonetic disorders) and phonemic disorders (also called phonological disorders). However, some may have a mixed disorder in which both articulation and phonological problems exist. Though speech