Hey Star,
I started to post last night but got interrupted by my own kiddos.
I think it's hard to know the extent to which tongue tie is going to be implicated in this, but certainly speech/language (expressive) isn't where it really should be if he's saying "erk" only.. though am I reading this right?
Can you do me an inventory? I'll do my ds's as an example, as you know he is the same age as yours (about a week younger I think?) and though he had a pretty crappy tongue tie and also has moderate bilateral fluctuating hearing loss, I'm not currently concerned about his speech so you can use this to do your own inventory and I can give you some basic advice while you wait.
Okay - here it goes.
What we are looking for here is: what consonants and vowels does he have and what syllable shapes is he using.
v or v/v
ear (ee eh)
uh oh - it's fallen
ah ah - stop it! (this is an Irish thing...)
ooh aah - monkey
vc - up
cv -
ga - car
baw - ball
go - coat
dee - cheese
muh - moo/cow
baa - baa/sheep
no (nose/no)
yeh - yes
mo - more
cvcv - same consonant
mama
dada
baba - baby/himself
dedda (Brendan)
doo doo (choo choo/Thomas)
la la (Smurf - the song has become the name!)
deh deh - bye bye
nigh nigh - night night
dodo - toes
cvcv - same consonant/different vowel
nee naw - his fire engine
hiya
cvcv - different consonant/different vowel
hello
puppy
vcv
oba - open
aba - apple/orange/general fruit
iya - hiya
aw doh - all gone
cvc
duk - stuck/duck
look - look
I've included things like choo choo/baa/moo/nee naw here because they are being used as actual words e.g. to comment and request vs as symbolic noise in play.
In terms of speech, the general advice at this age would be exposure, exposure, exposure. Communication temptations to increase words regardless of what sounds are currently there/not there as you really need language you can work with to start to put shape on sounds. Speech clarity is always the last aspect to develop.
Once the general "word shapes" are there in terms of an identifiable shape being used as a word to request, comment etc, then you want to think about syllable shape.
cvcv (same consonant, same vowel) is usually where you want to start as it is the foundational block of speech in many respects.
In terms of exposure, you can do things like sing nonsense songs with cvcv structures e.g.
Mum mum mummy mum mum mum
MUMMY MUMMY
Mum mum mummy mum mum mum
Mummy Mummy MUM )(to tune of camptown races, repeat with baby and daddy etc).
Overtime you can use intraverbal procedures e.g. make a gap and get him to fill in within a song.
As you say he has "b" I would actually start with the sounds he has and try and get them occurring in other syllables using a procedure like this.
Other questions:
Have you had his ears checked? Any history of recurrent ear infections/ snottiness etc? Any reason to believe hearing might be compromised?
Is he babbling? Jargoning? Did he babble before ten months? Have you noticed any unusual sounds e.g. high pitched shrieking in place of babble or communicative noise. Does he make sound and jibber jabber away to himself while at play? Would you describe him as making much sound or is he particularly quiet?
Wrt tongue tie in particular, have you noticed ANY of these sounds in babble or jargon
t, d, l, r, sh, ch?
All of these involve tongue tip elevation in one way or another.
I will be honest and say it's rarely tongue tie. I don't think in 12 years of working, 8 with kids with specific and severe speech disorder that I have ever seen anyone who has had issues specifically because of tongue tie. I guess there might be some on the cleft lip and palate pathway but it's not common for tongue tie to cause articulation difficulties. Both of my boys have had SHOCKING tongue ties and all sorts of breastfeeding shenanigans which I won't bore you about, and ds1 had a division at 10 days which promptly grew back. The main implication of t/t is usually feeding vs speech.