The Multilingual Children's Speech website is popular: 303,488 views by 194,058 active users (1 Jan 2023 - 13 July2026) with the following pages being the most popular
The following manuscript has been accepted for publication. I am so proud of this work.
McLeod, S. & Blake, H. L. (2026, in press February) Global knowledge in 131 languages and dialects about children’s speech development, assessment, and intervention. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics.
Here is the abstract
This paper exhorts communication specialists to look beyond English language knowledge by providing evidence to disrupt the unsubstantiated belief that there are few assessment and intervention resources for supporting multilingual children’s speech. The Multilingual Children’s Speech website https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/home has curated 1,337 (mostly free) resources for supporting multilingual children’s speech acquisition, assessment, and intervention in 131 of the world’s languages and dialects (86 languages). Specifically, there are 658 speech acquisition studies in 55 languages, 423 speech assessment resources in 77 languages, and 178 speech intervention resources in 21 languages. This free website includes links to assessment tools, intervention manuals, journal articles, books, chapters, theses, and video recordings for 16 of the top 20 most spoken languages in the world and many minority languages, Indigenous languages (e.g., Māori, Samoan, Sesotho, Setswana, Warlpiri, isiXhosa, Zapotec, isiZulu) and languages and dialects impacted by colonization and slavery (e.g., African American English, Fiji English, Jamaican Creole, Tok Pisin). Only 17.95% of the resources are about English, with 51.68% about 39 other Indo-European languages, and 30.37% about 46 languages belonging to 15 non-Indo-European language families. Previous analyses of curated knowledge about children’s development in psychology and linguistics have found a WEIRD bias “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies”; however, only 29.07% of the languages included on the Multilingual Children’s Speech website are WEIRD. While only 1.23% of the 7000 world languages are represented on the website, these assessment and intervention resources will continue to grow due to ongoing work of multilingual communication specialists across the globe.
This afternoon Helen Blake, Kate Margetson and I met to keep working together on our edited book - Multilingual Aspects of Children's Speech Sounds (2nd ed.). The book is coming along really well. It is ahead of schedule thanks to Helen's excellent oversight. We have 28 submitted chapters and 10 have finished two reviews and copyediting - with the others at various stages in the process.
We also had to have a moment or two talking about puppies :)
I am keynote speaker at the International Society of Monolingual and Bilingual Speech (ISMBS) conference in Chania, Greece (16-19 June 2025). Details of my keynote address are below. Dr Helen Blake and I are also presenting a paper titled: "Audio and video recordings supporting multilingual children's speech" and Helen is co-presenting a poster with her PhD student.
There are 52 oral presentations and 21 posters with attendees from 26 countries (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong SAR China, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Moldovia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Taiwan, The Netherlands, UAE, UK, USA).
Prof Elena Babastouli ended her opening address with the following quote: "Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises" (Demosthenes).
It is always great to share knowledge with colleagues from across the world - and this conference in Chania is special.
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| The ISMBS conference venue on the Chania harbour |
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| Sharynne and Helen Blake at the Arsenal |
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| Sharynne's keynote |
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| Colleagues who have written chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World from Wales, Poland, Cyprus and Greece |
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| Prof Elena Babatsouli (ISMBS chair), Sharynne and Prof Kakia Petinou Κάκια Πετεινού (ISMBS committee) |
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| Helen presenting her paper with Sharynne cheering in the background |
Multilingual Minds are Unlocking Global Knowledge, γνώση, 认识, إدراك, דַעַת, ज्ञान …
Distinguished Professor Sharynne McLeod
Children’s Voices Centre, Charles Sturt University, Australia
Global understandings of speech, language, and communication encompass knowledge from 7,000+ languages. Communication professionals who read English have access to research and evidence-based resources, assessments, and interventions in approximately 100 languages. Critiques of psychology and linguistics report that research has focussed on English, northern hemisphere Indo-European languages (Draper et al., 2023; Kidd & Garcia, 2022), and “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies” (Henrich et al., 2010). This presentation will commend the work of multilingual minds (researchers, professionals, and translators) who provide English-language access to global knowledge about speech, language, and communication. It will outline the decade of work of the International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children’s Speech, and knowledge contained within global initiatives including:The presentation will conclude by challenging our reliance on English as the medium for knowledge dissemination and acknowledging the future potential of our connected multilingual world for greater understandings of speech, language, and communication.
- The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World
- Multilingual Children’s Speech website (https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-acquisition/speech-acq-studies)
- Crosslinguistic Phonology Project (https://phonodevelopment.sites.olt.ubc.ca/),
- Multilingual Families Lab Familles Multilingues (https://bilingualacquisition.wordpress.com/)
- CHILDES (https://childes.talkbank.org/) and PhonBank (https://phon.talkbank.org/)
I was invited to be a guest on the "What’s Got Us Talking: The UTS Speech Pathology Podcast"
Discover the latest research and insights in Speech Pathology from the University of Technology Sydney. Join Professor Bronwyn Hemsley, Head of Speech Pathology at UTS, as she starts the conversations shaping the field. A must-listen for speechies, students, and their curious friends.
https://omny.fm/shows/whats-got-us-talking-the-uts-speech-pathology-pod
Here are the shownotes:
Understanding each other: Multilingual speech pathology practice
Description
As multilingual speech pathology is an emerging field of research and practice, we explore how and why speech pathologists support multilingual clients, and several new developments. it.
Resources:
Multilingual Children’s Speech YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRXcSAl_dA7arRMrE0qdxLuzGChY1LgY2
Multilingual Children’s Speech website: https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech
Key paper:
McLeod, S., & Crowe, K. (2018). Children’s consonant acquisition in 27 languages: A cross-linguistic review. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 27(4), 1546–1571. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_AJSLP-17-0100
Free posters: https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-acquisition/learning-english-consonants
Host: Prof Bronwyn Hemsley
Guests: Dr Denise Ng, Prof Sharynne McLeod, Emily Chan, and Lily.
Produced by Laura Corrigan, thanks to 2SER
Here are the presentations from our team at ECV2024 this week
The videos supporting the Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World will be launched at the Early Childhood Voices 2024 Conference (ECV2024) on Monday.
Here is the conference website: https://earlychildhoodresearch.csu.domains/early-childhood-voices-conference-2024/
ECV2024 conference registration: (free registration to attend the online conference) https://cvent.csu.edu.au/event/0d591439-4c54-4f18-8620-1f37f00582f4/summary
The videos supporting our Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World are found in Stream 2
STREAM 2: Multilingual children's speech development
Presentations ECV2024-500 to ECV2024-575
You can discover how children learn to speak more than 48 home languages by watching 75 presentations provided by international experts in each language. The experts explain where the language is spoken, the components of the language (vowels, consonants, tones), and the assessments and interventions available to support children learning to speak that language. Once you have listened to the presentations in English, you can listen to the same information presented in the language being spoken about. For example, you can hear how children learn to speak Kurdish in an English presentation and then listen again in Kurdish, or you can listen to a presentation about Jamaican Creole in English and in Jamaican Creole. Currently 27 of the 48 languages that have videos in both the language and English.
We hope you enjoy meeting the chapter authors and learning about multilingual children's speech development across the world.
Here is the presentation that outlines the focus of this stream of ECV2024:
ECV2024-500
Multilingual children’s speech development
Sharynne McLEOD, Charles Sturt University, Australia (smcleod@csu.edu.au)
Helen L. BLAKE, Charles Sturt University, Australia (heblake@csu.edu.au)
There is a long history of research about children’s speech development. While some languages have well established and easily accessible data, assessments, and methods regarding children’s speech development, research in other languages starts with the creation of culturally and linguistically appropriate assessment tools and methods. The research presented in Early Childhood Voices 2024 (ECV2024) Stream 2: Multilingual children's speech development and The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World (McLeod, 2025) presents a paradigm shift in the world’s knowledge of children’s speech development. It provides a transformative solution for how disciplines can reduce disparities and overcome traditional English- and Western-centric biases. We present research from 172 international authors writing about 49 languages and 26 dialects across six languages (including knowledge not previously translated into English and from traditionally marginalized groups). We provide evidence of the importance of everyone’s right to communicate without distinction of language, the benefits of multilingualism and international collaborations to build diverse interdisciplinary knowledge. The curated data within the presentations and chapters enable identification of common and unique elements of children’s speech development across languages and dialects, assessments, interventions, and terminology. The presentations use a rights-based, transformative social justice approach to support communication specialists to make a difference in children’s lives across the world.
We are systematically updating the Multilingual Children's Speech website (https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/home). Here is the new content:
People can no longer say that there are "no studies/assessments/interventions/resources" in languages other than English. There are a LOT (especially if you look beyond the English language).
Information has been added by collaborating with colleagues, mostly authors of The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World. Thank you everyone for your generosity to make this website such a useful resource.
At CSU Dr Helen L. Blake has been amazing working with me on this project.
The fantastic CSU webteam have been so
supportive and creative: Boram Kwon, Alex Moore, Lindsey Ting, Kath,
Kelly Bull, Amber Murray – overseen by Paula Woodhouse. (I am so pleased we have made it to the top of their workplan. I originally booked in the update of this website just before the COVID pandemic - so appreciate their current focus on our site).
The Multilingual Children's Speech website is being updated by the CSU webteam at the moment. Dr Helen L. Blake and I are working on significant content updates with Boram Kwan, Lindsey Ting and Alex Moore overseen by Paula Woodhouse. They are amazing!
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We are systematically updating the Multilingual Children's Speech website. Today we have uploaded the updated Speech Assessment Tools page:
https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-assessments/speech-assessment-tools
The page now has 379 speech assessment tools.
Previously (yesterday) there were 117 speech assessments on the Speech Assessment Tools page*.
There are 262 NEW assessments on the page (compared with yesterday).
These have been added by collaborating with colleagues, mostly authors of The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World. Thank you everyone for your generosity to make this website such a useful resource.
Thank you especially to Dr Helen L. Blake who is working with me on this project and the fantastic CSU webteam: Boram Kwon, Alex Moore, Lindsey Ting, Kelly Bull, Amber Murray.
*63 were on the Multilingual Children's Speech website Sept 2024 (not in OUP chapter) + 54 were both on the website and in the OUP chapter (some have been updated)
The Early Childhood Voices Conference (ECV2024) offers a world first opportunity with its Multilingual Children’s Speech Development presentations. You can discover how children learn to speak more than 45 home languages by watching over 70 presentations provided by international experts in each language. The experts explain where the language is spoken, the components of the language (vowels, consonants, tones), and the assessments and interventions available to support children learning to speak that language.
Once you have listened to the presentations in English, you can listen to the same information presented in the language being spoken about. For example, you can hear how children learn to speak Kurdish in an English presentation and then listen again in Kurdish, or you can listen to a presentation about Greek in English and in Greek. These presentations will appeal to speech-language pathologists, teachers, psychologists, and linguists, as well as others wanting to learn linguistic terminology for information about each language. They may also be of interest to parents, second language learners, and people who want to listen to professional language users speaking in the language.
Today the CSU webteam (Alex Moore and Lindsey Ting) launched new pages and updates on the Multilingual Children's Speech website.
Dr Helen Blake and I have been updating information and creating new pages based on research undertaken by authors of The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World. There are completely new pages - and the other pages are being updated with hundreds of new entries! Here are some of the new pages that we have launched (more to come):
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| Dr Helen L. Blake and Sharynne working on the Multilingual Children's Speech website |
Dr Helen L. Blake and Dr Carolyn Gregoric are my essential teammates. Helen works closely with me on our Multilingual Children's Speech work and Carolyn works closely with me on the Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research Group and the Early Childhood Voices Conference (ECV2024). They are invaluable supports. We get so much done to support our colleagues, children and families across the world. Thank you Helen and Carolyn!
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| Helen, Sharynne and Carolyn - a great team |