Tweet 1:
Just published: First comprehensive study of Vietnamese-speaking children's acquisition of consonants, semivowels, vowels, and tones. Congratulations Dr Ben Phạm on your contribution to the education and speech therapy professions in Viet Nam @TrinhTFA https://doi.org/10.1044/2019_JSLHR-S-17-0405
Tweet 2:
Vietnamese-speaking 2-year-olds produce correctly: 46% consonants, 92% vowels, 91% tones; 5-year-olds: 93% consonants, 98% vowels, 96% tones. Most difficult: /ɲ, s, z, x/, tone 3 (creaky), tone 4 (dipping–rising). https://doi.org/10.1044/2019_JSLHR-S-17-0405
Tweet 3:
Vietnamese children (aged 2;0-5;11) were “usually” to “always” intelligible (4.43/5) on the Intelligibility in Context Scale. Scores differed by child age, parent speech and language concerns, occupation and education. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02699206.2017.1306110 http://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/ics
Tweet 4:
Western calendar age (tuổi tây) is different from Vietnamese age (tuổi ta) that is calculated by the lunar year and includes time in the womb. Children may be 1–2 years older using #Vietnamese age (Phạm & McLeod, 2019, p.6) https://doi.org/10.1044/2019_JSLHR-S-17-0405
Tweet 5:
Vietnamese pronunciation differs per dialect
Initial consonants: Standard=23, northern=20, central=23, southern=21
Final consonants: Standard=6, northern=10, central=10, southern=8
Tones: Standard=6, northern=6, central=5, southern=5
https://doi.org/10.3109/17549507.2015.1101162
Here is the abstract:
Purpose The aim of this study was to investigate children's acquisition of Vietnamese speech sounds.
Method Participants were 195 children aged 2;2–5;11 (years;months) living in Northern Viet Nam who spoke Vietnamese as their 1st language. Single-word samples were collected using the Vietnamese Speech Assessment (Phạm, Le, & McLeod, 2016) to measure accuracy of consonants, semivowels, vowels, and tones.
Results Percentage of consonants correct for children aged 2;0–2;5 was 46.39 (SD = 7.95) and increased to 93.13 (SD = 6.13) for children aged 5;6–5;11. The most difficult consonants were /ɲ, s, z, x/. Percentage of semivowels correct for children aged 2;0–2;5 was 70.74 (SD = 14.38) and increased to 99.60 (SD = 1.55) for children aged 5;6–5;11. Percentage of vowels correct for children aged 2;0–2;5 was 91.93 (SD = 3.13) and increased to 98.11 (SD = 2.79) for children aged 5;6–5;11. Percentage of tones correct for children aged 2;0–2;5 was 91.05 (SD = 1.42) and increased to 96.65 (SD = 3.42) for children aged 5;6–5;11. Tones 1, 2, 5, and 6 were acquired by the youngest age group, whereas Tone 3 (creaky thanh ngã) and Tone 4 (dipping–rising thanh hỏi) did not achieve 90% accuracy by the oldest age group. Common phonological patterns (> 10%) were fronting, stopping, deaspiration, aspiration, and semivowel deletion for children aged 2;0–3;11 and were fronting and deaspiration for children aged 4;0–5;11.
Conclusion This is the 1st comprehensive study of typically developing Northern Vietnamese children's speech acquisition and provides preliminary data to support the emerging speech-language pathology profession in Viet Nam.
