Patterns of dyslalia in Egypt

The persistence of isolated phonological errors in a relatively late period of language development is referred to as dyslalia. When the articulation defect is specifically due to a neuromuscular dysfunction resulting from an organic lesion of the central nervous system, the condition is referred to as dysarthria. If the phonological error is more widespread involving several phonemes or phonemic clusters with distorsion, replacement and/or omission the condition is not considered as an articulation problem. It is rather considered as an element of a symbolic language problem which might involve evident syntactic and semantic defects as well. During the first few years of phoniatric practice in Egypt certain tendencies–pathological, social and therapeutic–were found to be characteristic of dyslalia, in the activity area of the phoniatric Unit of Ain Shams University. Within a period of 3 years (1974–1976), 568 new patients …