Abstract

This study is a case study which describes the speech of three pre-school Nasiriya Iraqi Arabic children. The data of this study are collected through tape-recording them. Through the analysis, it is concluded that the phonetic processes which exist in the informants’ speech include assimilation, elision, gemination, nasalization and tafxiim and the main ones are sound shift and metathesis. It has been noted that the study informants pronounce some consonants which are difficult to be pronounced by other children living in the same city; those consonants are either regularly shifted to in the production of other consonants or as part of ordinary words containing such sounds. Sometimes, more than one process is available in the production of some words. The consonantal changes existing in the informants’ speech are many compared with the vocalic ones which are very few.

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