Why can't my 2-year-old say "guh"?

[BroccoliSpears]

She's a chatterbox with quite a good vocabulary I think. Trouble is, often I'm the only one who knows what she's talking about because 'guh' comes out as 'duh' and 'cuh' comes out as 'tuh'

Goat = doat
Coat = toat

She can't do 'fuh' or 'luh' either, so
Phone = shone
Lemon = yemon

There are others. Add them all together and it gets confusing!

But I thought the 'guh' sound was the very first one they learn. Babies goo and gah don't they?

Not worried, just wondering how usual this is.

l and y are easy interchaged according to moondog. my 4 year old still says lellow for yellow for eg.
i don't know about ther others though but she is very young still. i'm sure it will come.

I think some children just get sounds at different times.

DS says "got" instead of "hot" but can do h's ok for "help" (actually, it is a weird throaty "hchelp" )

She is 2, give her some time

Mine's just the same, she's 2.1. She can't say any 'k' or 'g' sounds but her vocab and syntax are really good so I haven't been worried but will be watching this thread to see if anybody knows more about it.

DD1 had a mild speech problem when she was pre school age. As both Dh and I never had any issues as children, we were both mildly concerned. Hers was a classic "r" (I saw a wobin in the garden mummy!" along with a few other awkward consonant combinations. She grew out of it at around 5/6 - during reception year. Her reception teacher was brilliant about it and reassured us it was normal.

DD2 struggles with soft consonant sounds - notably "v" and "f" - "I lub you mummy!" type stuff. She can manage certain words with it in "football" and often more about the combination of sounds in the words. For example "love" is ok if i ask her to say it alone but quickly followed by "you" and she is "lazy" with it and uses "lubyou" instead
She is only 4 and a half and we see it as more important she is happy and positive with speech, learning new words, gently correcting and reinforcing good grammar than it is to pick up a speech problem like this.
If you are happy with their hearing, that their language skills (in terms of grammar and vocab bank) is developing well, I would not worry at all.

not expected to do reliably at 2.
she's doing really well to have a 'sh' at that age too!

i know i know i know

I know because my DD does the same, she is nearly three and been having speech therapy for speech delay, but she doesnt need it anymore as her speech is up to speed now [proud].

This whole thing with the guh sound being replaced with a tuh is called fronting. It means they are still using the front of their mouth to form the sound. Making cuh or guh sounds involves somehow getting the back of the tongue to the top of the mouth, which if you stop to think about doing is quite hard. So this is why it comes later - at least that is what my SALT says. DD is nearly three and she was happy that she still does this.

I thought that about babies buti guess its not a concious formation of the sound.

My DS didn't start prounoucning "th" and "ch" until he was 5.5, he is 7 now and has only just started prounouncing G, J sounds correctly. We never made an issue out of it, I just used to ask him a lot of questions which required the answer to be a word using one of the sounds he was having trouble with.

I spoke to his teachers at school and none of them were worried, they said if they had been they would have spoken to me about it and apparently a lot of children even at age 7 don't prounounced every letter/combination correctly.

interested to read this - my dd can't say her "f"s, her "g"s or her "k/c"s. School are suggesting a speech therapist - but is this something that will be OK by itself in long run?? Is there anything we can do to help - she's getting self concious about the "f"s - won't say shes four - will just hold up four fingers

DS1 used to call my mum "Danny xxxx" instead of Granny xxxx at that age. He just started saying guh when he was ready. I think 2 is early to be worrying tbh.

for your DD nervousal. My DS (luckily) was never self concious at all which was good because at least I could get him to keep practising the words.

It was a relief when he eventually got all the sounds though - especially as his best friends at George and James. TBH I was suprised that none of his friends seemed to notice.

If the school are suggesting speech therapy I suppose it would be good as they could show you the techniques (DS recept teacher showed me how to get him to "position" his tongue for the "th" sound). I suppose the downside of speech therapy could be that it would draw attention to the fact the she can't pronounce certain letters and she may just grow out of it like my DS.
I think if the school had suggested speech therapy I would probably have gone with it as he has had very good teachers and I have always trusted their judgement.

2 years old is miles too young to worry about k/g sounds - have been through much speech therapy with DD age 6 (who still doesnt have these sounds ) which the SALT says are almost the last ones to develop. But even my other children didnt get these sounds till much later than 2. For a while aged 4 my DD didnt have f, v, s, ch, sh as well as k and g. Then I really did feel like I had to act as her interpreter. Now she has all but k and g we only have the occasional misunderstanding .