Articulation Error Patterns in Spanish-Speaking

The study examined the articulation error patterns of 120 Spanish-speaking children aged three to five years, seven months. The common misarticulations produced by the children are described. Interest in normative data for languages other than English has in-creased over the past several years. The lack of information regarding the acquisition of speech sounds in Spanish was noted by Anderson (1981). More recently, Cole (1985) also noted the need for developmental data on minority language populations. Studies investigating the age of acquisition of Spanish phonemes have been conducted in recent years (Mason, Smith & Hinshaw, 1976; Linares, 1981; Jimenez, 1986). Infor-mation regarding the age of acquisition of speech sounds is essential in order to determine whether or not a child has an articulation disorder. A sound substitution error is viewed differently by the speech clinician depending upon the age of the child producing the error. For example, a three-year-old English-speaking child saying &dquo;wabbit&dquo; for &dquo;rabbit&dquo; woul