Improving my 2 year olds pronunciation (SALTS views especially welcome!)

[boo64]

I have posted on here before about my 2.3 year old's speech a couple of times (thanks especially KTNoo for your answers!)

He has a good vocabulary now and is making great progress imo - maybe several hundred words, he's up to 3 or 4 word phrases sometimes and appears to be getting a little bit more confident about talking to others apart from me and dh (although he is always going to be quiet I think as he has dh's personality rather than being a chatty type like me!)

Anyway, his pronunciation is quite poor and although to an extent this is normal at this age, I feel he needs to unlearn some words and relearn them now he has more sounds he can make. I have read that maybe 50% of a just turned two year old's words should be intelligible to a 'stranger' for example but I don't think much of ds's would be.
I know what he means in context and he uses the same sounds very consistently.

To get to my question (hey I did say I was the chatty type..ramble ramble)sometimes I've started to break a word he slurrs into the syllables so he can hear the sounds better and we really emphasise the endings as he misses nearly all consonant endings. Then he repeats what we say which he seems to do happily and much better. E.g Ca T for cat instead of ca. But then he mostly slips back to the old way of saying something. Is this the right way to deal with things, will he eventually start remembering?

I've tried just repeating things back correctly in a non judgemental way (I am still not being judgemental this way either please note) but it wasn't making any difference and I think he just seemed to think he was getting it right as I understand him.
I can tell he really thinks he is saying the right thing as he sort of corrects me if I say it the 'incorrect' way he does if I think he means something else.

Sorry to ramble on - advice on this would be great. I don't think his situation warrants bothering the SALTs with as it isn't too serious but I want guidance that I'm doing the right thing!

He sounds very normal to me. My ds (2.5) is speaking much, much more clearly than he was two months ago, it's like in the rush to learn new vocab they don't have time to learn how to say it all properly. He still has a lot of things he can't say clearly - except to our accustomed ears - and he's holding on to some 'baby phrases' for some things and relinquishing them slowly. So he can perfectly well say 'washing machine' but will normally say 'win win' for it, and has recently dropped 'baby moon' in favour of 'balloon', to my distress as I think 'baby moon' is lovely

Except for a few cherished phrases, like baby moon, I just repeat it back correctly in an enthusiastic way, like today he's been obsessed with saying "beat my buffers" (i.e. the phrase from the Thomas website that is meant to be 'bust my buffers'!), so I just kept saying "yes, bust my buffers". It has had no effect whatsoever, we were still beating those buffers by nightfall, but I guarantee that he will not use the phrase at all tomorrow and the day after will be saying 'bust my buffers'. They just need to go through the learning process.

I have to say, I am finding the whole process of learning language incredibly interesting.

He sounds very normal to me. My ds (2.5) is speaking much, much more clearly than he was two months ago, it's like in the rush to learn new vocab they don't have time to learn how to say it all properly. He still has a lot of things he can't say clearly - except to our accustomed ears - and he's holding on to some 'baby phrases' for some things and relinquishing them slowly. So he can perfectly well say 'washing machine' but will normally say 'win win' for it, and has recently dropped 'baby moon' in favour of 'balloon', to my distress as I think 'baby moon' is lovely

Except for a few cherished phrases, like baby moon, I just repeat it back correctly in an enthusiastic way, like today he's been obsessed with saying "beat my buffers" (i.e. the phrase from the Thomas website that is meant to be 'bust my buffers'!), so I just kept saying "yes, bust my buffers". It has had no effect whatsoever, we were still beating those buffers by nightfall, but I guarantee that he will not use the phrase at all tomorrow and the day after will be saying 'bust my buffers'. They just need to go through the learning process.

I have to say, I am finding the whole process of learning language incredibly interesting.

I'd be quite interested in this too as my DD is the same - only in her case she says the ends of words and not the beginnings. OK, she is learning 2 languages, but she's unintelligible in both (though maybe a bit worse in English). The annoying thing is that she can pronounce some sounds perfectly well with some words, but mispronounces totally with another word, despite me trying to break it down (eg. Mummy is said perfectly but monkey is "pontey").

Brangelina - he does that too - says the sound correctly in some words and not in others.

Tribpot - I love ds's current 'peace car' for police car!
Very reassuring about your ds - let's hope mine improves too over the next couple of months! He is making progress but just seems quite a long way behind most (yes I KNOW I shouldn't compare...)

Examples of the slurring are things like saying his cousin's name Alex just comes out yaye. But if I say 'Al, ECKS' and really emphasise it he copies me. Will he learn the right way to say things like this.
One worry is that he will start talking in a ridiculous way by copying me and go round calling his cousin Al....dramatic pause....Ecksss.

Hello again Boo64!

You really can't do much more than give him accurate models of words at this young age. He still has plenty of time before you need to start worrying. It sounds like his language development is good as it would be acceptable for him to be joining only 2 words together at 2 years. My dd was making quite long sentences at that age but her sound development was nowhere near as good so she was also very difficult to understand. My ds, on the other hand, was only joining 2 words at age 2 but was quite clear. So they're all different.

He may not be perceiving all the differences between sounds yet, and until he does, he won't make all the distinctions himself. This is why SALTs don't usually work specifically on sounds until a child is at least 3. Often a child can imitate a sound before they produce it spontaneously.

It sounds like you're doing the right thing but it may not work quickly as he's still very little.

Thanks KTNoo - I think I should be paying you!
I don't mean to sound neurotic - I was rambling on and really just wanted to know whether the breaking words down strategy was a good idea.

That's a good description - the imitating vs spontaneous production thing - what I was trying to say but failing...

No problem - you'll get my bill....!

I think just sound normal and natural - don't over-emphasize as that distorts words. You can draw attention to sounds when he's a bit older but not sure he would get that yet. When my ds was 3 he could pick out "snakes" ("s") at the beginnings or words, for example.

As I'm sure I said before and may say again - lots of children his age can't talk at all. I would question the 50% word comprehensible to a stranger - I think that asking a lot of a just 2 year old. Please don't take this the wrong way, but I wonder if you need to relax a bit and just chat to him,rather than trying to teach him to talk? I remember my mother saying to me when dd was little, "Leave her alone - I'm going to make her a tee shirt with This Child Grows Up Automatically" on it!" Enjoy the little foible of speech - it's sad when they get everything right. I still remember my dd shouting at her two big cousins "TOP IT TOO TWO!" And she is now an 11 year old with beautiful clear diction - except when she is adopting the persona of a gangsta rapper and saying things like "yo man wot's down on da street?"