Speech sound disorders or differences : insights from bilinguals speaking two Chinese languages

Abstract

The study investigated the differences in the phonological patterns exhibited in the Cantonese-Mandarin bilingual children and their counterparts who were native in either Cantonese or Mandarin. Sixty children living in Shenzhen or Hong Kong, aged 3;6-6;0 were recruited from nurseries in the Northern District of Hong Kong to participate in the study. The Hong Kong Cantonese Articulation Test (HKCAT; Cheung, Ng, & To, 2006) and the Mandarin Naming Test (MNT; Zhu & Dodd, 2000) were used in the collection of Cantonese and Mandarin speech samples. Phonological patterns exhibited by ≥30% of the children in an age group were compared with the developmental patterns reported in HKCAT and MNT. The bilingual children in the present study demonstrated delayed and atypical phonological patterns. Results indicated evidence of transfer (Goldstein & McLeod, 2012) and phonological interference (Yavas, 1998). The findings can serve as a preliminary reference about the speech ability of the Cantonese-Mandarin bilingual children in Hong Kong for practicing speech language pathologists in differentiating dialectal difference and true speech sound disorders in the bilingual children.