“W” Talk: Why Children Sometimes Use “W” in Place of Other Sounds

One of my favorite things right now is hearing my young two-year-old trying to say all the things with his growing vocabulary and pronunciation skills. It’s so fun to hear his cute little voice going on and on about things that are important to him. And the ones that make me giggle and smile the most are when he talks about sleeping (“weeping”), drinking (“winking”) and Uncle Chris (“Wiss”).

I just can’t help but smile so big when I hear him playing with his brother when there’s a whole play sequence involving sleeping toys. I’ll listen in and hear over and over again “weeping!” Like “digger weeping Ji-Ji!” Or “I weeping!” And on and on.

Or, I’ll be at the table with him for a meal and he’ll demand a “wink, mama, wink!”  I. Love. It.

😍😍😄😄😄

You may have noticed that there are a few things in common with these little phrases. The stand out one: the “w” sound is used to substitute for the correct sounds in these words. Another commonality that you might not have noticed is that each “w” is replacing a combination of consonants, also called consonant blends. For example, “w” replaces “sl” in sleep; “dr” in drink; and “chr” in Chris.

This is no strange coincidence. It’s actually a quite common occurrence in toddlers who are learning to speak. These are tricky combos for our little guys to produce! Our kids know that some kind of fancy combination of lip and tongue movements are needed but they haven’t mastered it yet. Instead, in their efforts, the “w” sound is created.

Why? Well, vowels are among the first sounds that children consistently learn to produce correctly. And while “w” may be a consonant sound in the alphabet, it’s pretty much a vowel in pronunciation. (It’s coined a “semi-vowel”).

This feature makes it harder than a regular vowel (as well as harder than many consonants like “m”) but easier than something like “br”. So, in your kids’ attempts to make tricky consonant blends, “w” comes out.

This substitution is also most common with sound combinations that contain an “l” or “r”. By nature, “l”, “r” and “w” are all produced in similar ways, with air moving through the mouth around the tongue or lips in specific positions to make the desired sounds.

However, “l” and “r” are both really tricky to produce! In typical development, the average child doesn’t start saying them correctly until 5-6 years of age! In contrast, most children are able to correctly produce “w” by age 3. (Check out the speech norms found at Mommy Speech Therapy). So “w” is a natural substitution while kids are still working up to “l” and “r” –let alone “l” and “r” combined with other sounds!!

Here are some other “w” substitutions that you might hear:

• clean it/wean it
• slide/wide
• fruit/woot
• bread/wed
• red/wed
• love/wuv
• flute/woot
• room/womb

What have your kids been saying? Let me know in the comments below!

Concerned about your child’s speech productions? Check out these other posts!

Hello! I’m Briana!