What are the most significant elements in the language development of children between the ages of twelve months and five years?

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What are the most significant elements in the language development of children between the ages of twelve months and five years?

One of the most important moments for parents is there child's first word, displaying the child's mental and physical development, this usually occurs one year into the child's life.

A child if one can recognise fifty words but pronounce only one vowel and three consonants. The individual sounds vary as some children have favourite sounds, and others purposely avoid sounds, perhaps dropping "t"s at the ends of words so cat becomes ca'. Children will often play with sounds, pronouncing the same word in many ways, before regularly using the correct version (one child managed to pronounce "pen" ten different ways in half an hour). Yet by the age of two and a half he/she will have mastered all of the vowels and two thirds of the consonants. And by four years he will have trouble with only a few consonants.

To make words easier to say children will simplify them in a number of different ways:

Simplification by deletion, where consonant clusters are avoided e.g. "play" becomes "pey".

Simplification by substitution, harder sounds are