There are many kinds of assimilation that we will discuss in future posts. This phonological process is characterized by a sound taking on characteristics of another sound. A familiar example of this might be a 2-year-old child saying “wa-wa” for “water” or “nana” for “banana”. Due to this developmental process, children will simplify words in predictable ways until they develop the skills required to produce them clearly.
All children use these processes at some point in time while their speech and language skills are still developing because they don’t have to ability to coordinate the articulators - lips, tongue, teeth, etc. A phonological process is a pattern that young children adapt to simplify adult speech sounds.
