When your tongue, jaw, teeth, lips, and palate modify the air stream originating from the vocal folds, sounds, syllables, and words are produced. A person exhibits poor articulation when they make sounds, syllables, or phrases in a way that prevents listeners from understanding what is being said or causes them to focus more on how the words sound than on their meaning. Many very young children do mispronounce sounds, syllables, and phrases, which can make articulation problems look like baby babble at times. Yet, words that young children mispronounce as cute can obstruct older children's or adults' dialogue. The articulation issues of older children and adults are so severe that they are not similar to "baby talk." Deformities of the oral structure, such as those caused by hearing loss, dental issues, cleft palate, or cerebral palsy, can cause articulation issues. The majority of articulation issues, however, don't have any visible physical impairments. These so-called functional articulation issues could be the result of incorrect speech sound learning.
