Presentation - ECV2024-533

Children’s speech development: German

Annette Fox-Boyer, University of Lübeck, Germany, (annette.foxboyer@uni-luebeck.de)
Sigrun Lang, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Hildesheim/Holzminden/ Göttingen, Health Campus Göttingen; University medical Center Göttingen, Germany, (sigrun.lang1@hawk.de)

German is spoken in a number of central European countries, specifically Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein and there are many varieties as well as dialects. Standard German is characterized by 23 consonants, 2- and 3-element consonant clusters, seven vowels, and three diphthongs. German uses the Modern Latin Alphabet. There are several studies of children’s acquisition of German that demonstrate that systematic phonological patterns can be found from the age of 2;6 and that phonological acquisition is completed by 5 years of age. Researchers have focused on children with speech sound disorders (SSD) and dysarthria. Small studies exist on childhood apraxia of speech and hearing impairment. Common speech assessments include Psycholinguistische Analyse kindlicher Sprechstörungen (PLAKSS-II; Fox-Boyer, 2014), Patholinguistische Diagnostik von Sprachentwicklungsstörungen – Teil: Phonologie (PDSS; Kauschke et al., 2022), Analyseverfahren zu Aussprachestörungen bei Kindern (AVAK; Hacker & Wilgermenin,, 2002), and LOGO Ausspracheprüfung (Wagner, 2011) and interventions include traditional articulation therapy, phonological therapy, seldom inconsistency treatment, and a number of unpublished treatments for childhood apraxia of speech (CAS).

Key words:
German, multilingual, communication, speech, language, children’s development, interdisciplinary, international communities, assessment, intervention

Book chapter:
Fox-Boyer, A., & Lang, S. (2025). German speech development. In S. McLeod (Ed.). The Oxford handbook of speech development in languages of the world. Oxford University Press.

Language overview presentation:

This presentation relates to the following United Nations Sustainable Development Goals:

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