Consonant Consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and , pronounced by forcing air through a narrow channel (fricatives); and and , which have air flowing through the nose (nasals). Contrasting with consonants are vowels. Since the number of possible sounds in all of the world's languages is much greater than the number of letters in any one
Speech sound disorder often need the services of a Speech-Language Pathologist to learn correct speech sounds. Some speech sound errors can result from other syndromes or disorders such as: In a typical 2-year-old child, about 50% of speech may be intelligible. A 4-year-old child's speech should be intelligible overall, and a 7-year-old should be able to clearly produce most words consistent with community norms for their age. Misarticulation of certain difficult sounds ("l", "r", "s", "z", "th", "ch", "dzh", and "zh") may be normal up to 8 years. Children with speech sound disorder have pronunciation difficulties inappropriate for their age, and the difficulties