The Acquisition of Fricatives and Affricetes by Mosuli Children between 2 and 5 Years

The present study deals with the acquisition of fricatives and affricates by Mosuli children of the age 2-5 years old. It describes the way in which these sounds are acquired by those children. So 48 children were needed for this study. They were divided into two age groups. Each group contained 24 children. A group of pictures were presented for the children to test their pronunciations of fricatives and affricates. Their speech has been recorded and analysed. It is found that, the sounds was gradual and that children do not affricates at the same rate. The children u al processes throughout the process of acquisition to simplif their speech, such as: assimilation, deletion and substitution. The study has shown that the earliest fricative sounds to be acquired was /f/ and / f/ followed by the palato alveolar ldsl, [], /t/; the alveolars lsl,l5l,lzJ, /r/, the glottal /h/ and the uvular /T/ with /01, 16l,6l and /x/ being the most difficult