Vietnamese-speaking children's acquisition of consonants, semivowels, vowels, and tones in northern Viet Nam

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.