/Y/ Words for Speech Therapy

The /Y/ sound is a voiced glide made by raising the middle of the tongue toward the roof of the mouth and sliding into the vowel that follows — the sound at the start of "yes," "yellow," and "yo-yo." Speech-language pathologists write it with the IPA symbol /j/, which can look confusing to parents. Like /W/, it is a glide, so it always begins a syllable and never ends one: words such as "boy," "day," and "my" end in vowel sounds, not a /Y/.

Most children master the /Y/ sound by age 3-4. It usually arrives a bit later than /W/ but earlier than the trickier /R/, /S/, and /L/ sounds. If /Y/ is still missing or substituted at age 5, an evaluation is a good idea.