Phonological acquisition in Vietnamese-speaking children with central dialect

ABSTRACT

The current study investigated the phonological development in 3 to 7-year-old Vietnamese-speaking children with central dialect. Previous studies of speech development in Vietnamese-speaking children have focused on northern and southern dialects. The central Vietnamese dialect has distinct dialectal features. Therefore, it is essential to examine speech acquisition in children with central dialect to diagnose speech sound disorders accurately. Speech samples were collected from 80 children. Two native Vietnamese speakers transcribed children's speech productions independently using IPA symbols. The percentage of consonants correct, the percentage of initial consonants correct, the percentage of final consonants correct, the percentage of semivowels correct, and the percentage of vowels correct were calculated for age and sex groups. Ages of acquisition of individual consonants and phonological patterns were also identified. Overall, central Vietnamese-speaking children showed similar speech acquisition patterns compared to children with northern and southern Vietnamese dialects and other languages (e.g., vowels and semivowels were acquired early, and bilabials were acquired earlier than retroflex sounds). However, several differences from other dialects were also found in the age of acquisition for individual consonants (e.g., initial consonants /v/, /c/ and final consonants /k/, /ɲ/, /ŋ/). Central Vietnamese-speaking children produced initial /b/, /j/, /s/, /r/ and final /k/, /ŋ/ as dialectal variants for initial /p/, /z/, /ʂ/, /ʐ/ and final /t/, /n/, respectively. The current study's findings help us obtain a more comprehensive understanding of speech acquisition patterns in Vietnamese children and Vietnamese dialectal variants.

KEYWORDS:

• Vietnamese
• central dialect
• speech acquisition
• phonological acquisition

Acknowledgements

This project was supported by the Fulbright U.S. Scholarship awarded to the first author. The authors thank to children and their parents who participated in this study. The authors also thank Ms. Tahira Gibson at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and Dr. Barbara Davis at University of Texas at Austin for proofreading our manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fulbright US Scholarship awarded to the first author.