What do you call a person with speech problems?

Question

I.e., someone who pronounces the sound of the letter f as p (and vice versa), and r as l (and vice versa).

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

Those are not speech problems; they have simply not learned the proper articulation for L2 sounds yet.

GrammarLoser · Answer

Is there a specific term for those people, then? And what's L2? <img class='emoticon' style='Width:19px;Height:19px;' data-delaysrc='https://uat-englishforward-forums-backend.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Emoticons/1.gif' src='https://uat-englishforward-forums-backend.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Emoticons/1.gif' alt='Emotion: smile'/>

KrisBlueNZ · Answer

Generally, a person who pronounces certain sounds wrong is described as having a speech impediment.
I've never heard of anyone pronouncing F as P or vice versa.
Confusion between R and L seems to occur with Chinese people (or perhaps I'm just buying into a silly stereotype), but I don't know if there's a name for it. It could just be part of a "Chinese accent".
Accents in general could be described as mispronunciations; these may be unintentional (e.g. Dutch people tend to pronounce that as dat), or intentional (e.g. Cockneys omitting the H sound).
Unintentional mispronunciations often occur because the person's native language doesn't have the sound that's required, and their brain doesn't know how to move the necessary muscles to get that sound. So they use a sound that's similar, that they can make.
Speech impediments are most often due to features of the mouth, teeth, tongue etc that make certain sounds difficult or impossible to pronounce. A common one is the lisp, which causes people to pronounce S as TH, so instead of saying lisp, they say lithp.
People may also mispronounce words because of hearing limitations.
The mispronunciations you describe are probably not considered speech impediments.
I'm not a speech expert. Take these comments with a grain of salt.

Mister Micawber · Answer

GrammarLoserIs there a specific term for those people, then? And what's L2?

Kris has given you some terms for other problems, but I don't think they apply to the students I described. 'L2' is 'second language', the language an L1 speaker is learning.

What do you call a person with speech problems?

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