Source: unknown.
Here's how child speech actually works (or tend to work at least):
- kids tend to hypercorrect - this means they tend to say things like "sleeped" instead of "slept", "writed" instead of "wrote", "goed" instead of "went", etc.
- kids tend not to make errors such as omitting verbs ("I hungry").
- kids also tend not to make errors in the I/me, she/he department ("me am hungry").
- simplification of difficult sounds - consonant clusters especially, so things like "st, sp, ps," etc. As well as "f, v, th, ch" - sounds etc.
- "babbling"- type utterances ("apwen" for "airplane", using one babbly word for multiple objects, things like that) generally occur in children under the age of 3 and a half.
- an eight-year-old child is not going to be saying "me hungwy".
- do not confuse child speech with stereotypical learner English mistakes, that's not only incorrect but also gross on the stereotypical learner English front ("me love you long time", anybody?).
It can be helpful to remind yourself that young children tend to speak as though the English language actually made sense. Our brains are pattern recognising machines: children are really good at puzzling out the implicit rules of the English language, but they don't necessarily know all the silly exceptions and bizarre edge cases that break those rules yet - those can only be learnt through experience and rote memorisation.
Basically, when children who speak English as a first language make mistakes, it typically reflects a tendency to treat English as more grammatically, syntactically and/or orthographically consistent than it really is. In some cases, this can be compounded by the fact that some kids will get offended at how little sense "proper" English makes, and insist upon using more consistent forms even though they know very well that they're technically "wrong".
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