The international guide to speech acquisition

Learning to speak is one of our most significant achievements. It is remarkable how young children throughout the world decipher the languages they are exposed to and learn to communicate using intelligible speech. The International Guide to Speech Acquisition is a comprehensive resource regarding children’s speech acquisition.Typical speech acquisition is used as the framework of the book, as most children accomplish the ability to speak their local language as a natural and effortless part of their daily lives. Some children do not, and require additional input from speech-language pathologists, teachers, and families. Consequently, speech-language pathologists and teachers can use this book as a resource for understanding typical speech acquisition in order to scaffold their assessment, diagnosis, prevention, and intervention plans for children with speech impairment. Linguists, phoneticians, and those interested in children’s speech development will also find this book to be relevant to their work. The International Guide to Speech Acquisition comprehensively addresses speech acquisition, including the areas of articulation, phonology, and phonetics and is organized in two parts. Part I, Foundations of Speech Acquisition, contains an overview of the factors impacting all children’s speech acquisition, regardless of the language they speak. Part I is based around the framework of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) (World Health Organization, 2001). Using the framework of the ICF has meant an expansion beyond the typical chapters contained in books on children’s speech because the ICF embraces a biopsychosocial view of health and wellness. Thus, as well as chapters on genetics, neurology, oromusculature, hearing, articulatory, and linguistic foundations, Part I also includes chapters on historical and international perspectives of childhood, the family, social and educational contexts, activity and participation in society, and personal factors influencing speech acquisition. Learning to speak more than one language is addressed in the chapters on multilingual speech acquisition, children who are internationally adopted, accent modification, and working with interpreters. Part II, Speech Acquisition Around the World, contains specific information on speech acquisition for English dialects and other languages. The first chapters in Part II outline the unique features of 12 different English dialects. The initial chapter in Part II covers speech acquisition in General American English (GAE). This is then compared with three other American English dialects: African American English, Appalachian English, and Cajun English. English dialects from around the globe are then described: English (from England), Irish English, Scottish English, Australian English, and New Zealand English. Furthermore, English influenced by other major world languages is described in the chapters on Cantonese-influenced English and Spanish-influenced English. The next chapters in Part II outline the unique features of over 20 different languages. Major language families that are included within Part II are the following: Jordanian Arabic, Lebanese Arabic, Cantonese, Dutch, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Israeli Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Maltese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Putonghua (Modern Standard Chinese), Sesotho, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese, Welsh, Zapotec.