Icelandic Children's Acquisition of Consonants and Consonant Clusters

Purpose: This study investigated Icelandic-speaking children's acquisition of singleton consonants and consonant clusters. Method: Participants were 437 typically developing children aged 2;6-7;11 (years;months) acquiring Icelandic as their first language. Single-word speech samples of the 47 single consonants and 45 consonant clusters were collected using Malhljooaprof THORNM (THORNM's Test of Speech Sound Disorders). Results: Percentage of consonants correct for children aged 2;6-2;11 was 73.12 (SD = 13.33) and increased to 98.55 (SD = 3.24) for children aged 7; 0-7; 11. Overall, singleton consonants were more likely to be accurate than consonant clusters. The earliest consonants to be acquired were /m, n, p, t, j, h/ in word-initial position and /f, l/ within words. The last consonants to be acquired were /x, r, r., s, theta, n/, and consonant clusters in word-initial /sv-, stl-, str-, skr-,theta r-/, within-word /-or-, -tl-/, and word-final /-kl, -xt/ contexts. Within-word phonemes were more often accurate than those in word-initial position, with word-final position the least accurate. Accuracy of production was significantly related to increasing age, but not sex. Conclusions: This is the first comprehensive study of consonants and consonant cluster acquisition by typically developing Icelandic-speaking children. The findings align with trends for other Germanic languages; however, there are notable language-specific differences of clinical importance.