One of the most enchanting things children do is learning how to talk. In a few and short years, most if not all children transition from crying and gurgling to explaining in details what they want and don’t want. From a baby’s gibberish first words through to pre-schooler, elementary to middle school; detailed and defined conversations, early language development milestones are among the most momentous events in any caregivers or parent’s life.
For most children learning how to talk may seem easy but for some it is a stage of struggle and difficulty. Children learn how to talk more easily and faster if the adults in their homes spend enough time talking to them. Other children find it more difficult to develop speech because they do not hear their parents talk much.
All children have the ability to learn how to talk. Learning to talk is a natural habit, a natural gift inscribed deep within mankind’s genetic inheritance ( Bardies, De Bevoise 1999 ). In about the second year after conception or one year after being born, a child will utter his first words. The swiftness and skills with which many children master the art of speaking has always fascinated many adults. Before a child knows how to coordinate his hands to snap a toy, he will utmost have understood some if not all the sentences addressed to him by an adult. Before they even how to tie up or knot their shoelaces they will virtually have mastered the art of talking their language. This special ability of acquiring language so fast could only be described to come from a gift.
Speech is the sound coming out of the mouth which takes shape to form words. The process of learning how to talk is complex. In order to talk or produce speech there; * The desire to communicate must be present. * The brain should have earlier learned or heard words in the contexts. * It’s a prerequisite that the brain creates or develops an idea to communicate. * The brain then sends the idea to mouth * The brain must send signals to the mouth on what words to say and the sounds that makes up for those words. Accented syllables and patterns of intonation must also be incorporated * The brain has the duty of sending proper signals to speech producing muscle. This are the muscles that control the lips, jaw and tongue * The muscles must also have enough strength and coordination for them to carry out the commands of the brain. * There must be sufficient air in the lungs and the chest muscles must be robust to compulse the vocal cords to vibrate. For functional speech to ensue, the air should be going out and not in. * Again the vocal cords should be in fit and mint condition for clear and loud speech. * The words produced by the child are supposed to be monitored by his sense of hearing. This will help the child review whatever is said and listen to other new words to be imitated. If words are not clearly heard, the speech will be ‘mumbly’ when reproduced.
A parent or another older person must be inclined to communicate or connect with the child and attentively listen to whatever he is saying. A child would lose his motivation to speak if no one listens. If appropriately stimulation occurs, the processes of learning to talk happen naturally (Hamaguchi, 2001).

Basic stages of learning to talk
The process of learning to talk is innate and starts at birth. This begins when a child experiences voices and sounds. All children are born talking abilities that begin at birth. It doesn’t matter the language that a parent speaks, all children pretty much learn language the same way ( MacShane ,1980).

0-3 months
At this stage all a baby does is coo. He begins to form long prolonged words that change in annotation for example (“Ahh-ah-ahh”)
3 – 6 months
Here a baby begins to bable by using a consonant, a vowel and syllables with intonation changes for example (“Ba-ba-ba- Baa-ba!”).
6 – 9 months
Within this stage, a baby can already comprehend short simple words like No! He babbles and can control the babbling to two syllables. It may sound something like Ma-ma but typically he cannot understand the meaning. When babbling he uses more sounds with syllables such as ba, da, ma, pa, wa, and ka. The baby can also do typical utterances such as “Ga-ma-ga”.
9 – 12 months
At this stage a child has fun babbling and imitating simple words. A child will begin to understand what words represent (ie words represent objects). The child’s speech is not yet meaningful but he will jabber loudly and at times will try to talk. Some of the typical utterances at this point of stage is “Ooooh!” or “Ah-Ah” “Buh-Buh”.
12 - 18 months
The baby can understand 50 to 70 words. He can use 3 to 20 ‘real words’ though not produced clearly. He points, babbles and uses nonsensical words. A baby can utter short words such as “mamma” “no!” “Appu” to mean aple.
18 – 2 years
At this stage a baby can comprehend about 300 words and can use upto 50 recognizable words. Most of these words are nouns. He can more often talk with ‘real’ words but still uses a little bit of jargon and babbles. The baby uses language to get his needs met. When he wants to get something he will say “I want”, to exclaim he will say “uh-oh” and to protest he will use “no!” the baby will also use a pattern of rising intonation to show a question and can join two or more related words to come up with one word for example “stoppit” to mean stop it. He can answer questions such as “what’s your name”. He also joins in pre-school songs and rhymes. His speech is a little bit choppy and halting because he talks with many pauses in between words.

2 – 3 years
A child can understand up to 900 words and use about 500 of them. His speech is not yet clear.

4 – 5 years
A child can comprehend about 2,500 to 2,800 words and use more than 1,500 of them. He can talk clearly 70 to 85 percent of the time, he clearly uses language to reminisce and tell events about happenings of the past. The child uses all pronouns and many irregular verbs. Can repeat sentences with 8 to 10 syllables and also listens and attends to conversations with short stories and movies.
5 – 7 years
This are the years of refinement whereby a child has refined pronunciation, good sentence structure and above average word use. He is already in elementary school so he has increased vocabulary and can incorporate a few new words into a spontaneous speech. The child explains experiences and retells stories in a sequential and cohesive manner with greater elaboration. He spells and talks comprehensively.
7 years up to adolescence
At this point the child has an abstract and functional language system. He shows age appropriate skills in talking, listening and writing. He can comfortably join sentences to form descriptive and coherent stories and thoughts.
All the above are points of progress and milestones a person goes through in the quest of learning to talk.

Speech Disabilities
Children develop language and speech skills through learning. Skills for producing different acoustic patterns start developing in infancy. It continues to develop even throughout to year seven to eight of life ( Wolraich, 2003).Language and speech skills develop according to well and fairly defined milestones. Speech disabilites are classified mostly on the basis of abnormal speech characteristics. Some of the speeches disabilitiess that affect children are that are learning to talk include; * Stuttering
It’s commonly referred to as stammering. It is a disrupt of speech fluency. Stutters are most often referred to as nonfluencies or dyslfluencies. It occurs in forms of repetition, blocks or prolongation.
Speech is a very vital skill for communication. Without it many children won’t reach their full potential. It is evident that a child’s first years are the most crucial for language and speech development (Masterson, 2001).

References
Boysson-Bardies, B. ., & DeBevoise, M. B. (1999). How language comes to children: From birth to two years. Cambridge, Mass. [u.a.: MIT Press.
Hamaguchi, P. M. A. (2010). Childhood speech, language, and listening problems: What every parent should know. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley.
MacShane, J. (1980). Learning to talk. Cambridge [u.a.: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1999). The social world of children learning to talk. Baltimore, Md: P.H. Brookes Pub.
Apel, K., Masterson, J. J., & American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (2001).Beyond baby talk: From sounds to sentences : a parent's complete guide to language development. Roseville, Calif: Prima Pub.
Damico, J. S., M, . ., Ller, N., & Ball, M. J. (2012). The Handbook of Language and Speech Disorders. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.
Wolraich, M. L. (2003). Disorders of development and learning. Hamilton, Ont: BC Decker Inc
Hegde, M. N., & Davis, D. (2000). Clinical methods and practicum in speech-language pathology. Clifton Park, NY: Delmar Cengage Learning.
Hegde, M. N., & Davis, D. (2001). Clinical methods and practicum in speech-language pathology. Clifton Park, NY: Delmar Cengage Learning.