Objective To study the consonant articulation performance and speech intelligibility of patients with submucous cleft palate(SMCP)and to provide a reference for clinical speech evaluation and subsequent speech rehabilitation.Methods A total of 333 preoperative SMCP patients aged 4.5 years and older participated in this study.The accuracy,type of error,and error rates were assessed across participant genders and their varying levels of velopharyngeal closure function.Results Among the 333 patients,196 had complete velopharyngeal closure,while 137 had incomplete closure.A total of 145 patients(43.54％)demonstrated normal articulation of all conso-nants,while 188 patients(56.46％)displayed various degrees of articulation disorders.Compensatory articulation behaviors were observed in 66 patients(19.82％).No significant differences in articulation errors were found be-tween male and female patients.The accuracy ranking for consonants was from high to low as follows:nasal sounds,lateral sounds,fricatives,plosives,and affricates.Substitution was the most common error type with an incidence of 35.93％,followed by omission at 34.62％and compensatory errors at 25.51％.The average accuracy rates for plosives,fricatives,affricates,lateral/nasal sounds were 73.27％,78.20％,69.29％,and 93.39％,re-spectively.Substitution was the most common error for plosives and fricatives,while omission was most frequent for affricates.Compensatory errors occurred most often with affricates,and no compensatory errors were found in nasal or lateral sounds.Conclusion Substitution,omission,and compensatory errors are the most common articula-tion errors in SMCP patients,occurring across plosives,fricatives,and affricates.The severity of articulation disor-ders is related to velopharyngeal closure function but is independent of gender.

Objective To study the consonant articulation performance and speech intelligibility of patients with submucous cleft palate(SMCP)and to provide a reference for clinical speech evaluation and subsequent speech rehabilitation.Methods A total of 333 preoperative SMCP patients aged 4.5 years and older participated in this study.The accuracy,type of error,and error rates were assessed across participant genders and their varying levels of velopharyngeal closure function.Results Among the 333 patients,196 had complete velopharyngeal closure,while 137 had incomplete closure.A total of 145 patients(43.54％)demonstrated normal articulation of all conso-nants,while 188 patients(56.46％)displayed various degrees of articulation disorders.Compensatory articulation behaviors were observed in 66 patients(19.82％).No significant differences in articulation errors were found be-tween male and female patients.The accuracy ranking for consonants was from high to low as follows:nasal sounds,lateral sounds,fricatives,plosives,and affricates.Substitution was the most common error type with an incidence of 35.93％,followed by omission at 34.62％and compensatory errors at 25.51％.The average accuracy rates for plosives,fricatives,affricates,lateral/nasal sounds were 73.27％,78.20％,69.29％,and 93.39％,re-spectively.Substitution was the most common error for plosives and fricatives,while omission was most frequent for affricates.Compensatory errors occurred most often with affricates,and no compensatory errors were found in nasal or lateral sounds.Conclusion Substitution,omission,and compensatory errors are the most common articula-tion errors in SMCP patients,occurring across plosives,fricatives,and affricates.The severity of articulation disor-ders is related to velopharyngeal closure function but is independent of gender.