Speech disfluencies in bilingual Yiddish-Dutch speaking children

ABSTRACT

In this study, we investigated the frequency and types of stuttering-like (SLD) and other (OD) disfluencies in 59 typically developing bilingual Yiddish-Dutch (YD) speaking children. Participants were divided in two age categories: 6.01–7.07 and 9.00–10.04-year-olds. All children (1) were successive, bilingual YD speaking, (2) had Yiddish as their dominant language and (3) were sufficiently intelligible in both languages. A conversation sample of at least 300 syllables was collected in each of the two languages. The main findings in this study were (a) the total amount of SLD as well as OD were significantly higher in the non-dominant language. For the SLD, this was mainly caused by the higher frequency of monosyllabic word and syllable repetitions. For the OD, almost all disfluency types seem to have contributed to this. (b) The total amount of OD was significantly higher in the older group of bilingual YD children than in the younger group. This was primarily due to higher frequencies of phrase repetitions, lexical revisions and unfinished words. (c) The monolingual diagnostic guideline of three SLD per 100 words as a means to label stuttering cannot be used in this bilingual population. The majority of the non-stuttering children scored higher than the standard 3% SLD in both languages. In the dominant Yiddish language, 27 children (46%) scored above this percentage, in the non-dominant Dutch language, 46 children (78%).

We conclude that bilingual YD-speaking children have a higher frequency of speech disfluencies in comparison to monolingual children. Consequently, monolingual stuttering guidelines cannot be used in this bilingual population.

KEYWORDS:

• Speech disfluencies
• typical fluent
• bilingual
• language dominance

Acknowledgments

The present study was supported by Thomas More University College. The authors would like to thank the children and parents who participated in this study and students Tziri Romi Gottesfeld and Dinah Arnstein for their assistance in processing some of the data.

Declaration of interest statement

1. All authors listed in the by-line have made considerable contributions to this manuscript, have consented to the by-line order, and have agreed to submit the manuscript in its current form.

2. The authors have no financial or personal interest or belief that could affect their objectivity.

3. No research grants were received for this study.