How has your speech been?

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^^^^hiya Losty welcome to our club

I had no verbal speech until the summer of 1966 (age 5.5), when I went up to a research camp for children with autism.

One day, I was in a therapy room, and I said "I see a ball." People went crazy. Those were my first words.

the fact that my first non-infant word was "NO!!" seems to have set the tone of my life.

I've tended to talk a LOT throughout my life, to people I know well. I talk about very limited subjects, often annoying the hell out of my parents. However when in public I don't talk at all, and I'm shy when meeting people. I also have tremendous social anxiety, my speech is quiet and stuttery and it tends to get off topic extremely easily, unless it's a topic I know.

that doesn't at all seem out of the ordinary. 's'/'z', and 'p'/'b' are essentially the same phone, in that the same mouth/tongue configuration is used to produce them.

the only difference is that the latter sound (z/b) in those sets is voiced, whereas the former sounds (s/b) are unvoiced. that's pretty much the only factor that distinguishes them.

a sound is voiced when the vocal cords vibrate when saying them, you can test this yourself by putting your hand on your throat when pronouncing sounds.

as voicing is a major distinguishing factor in english phonemes (and indeed, throughout most european languages) being unaware of this distinction has been the source of many a speech therapy session.