Phonological skills in Korean-English bilingual children: phonetic inventory and segmental accuracy

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to describe phonological skills in Korean-English bilingual children aged between 3;0 and 7;11. The findings can contribute to our knowledge of bilingual children’s phonological development, facilitating the clinical assessment procedures for bilingual children with suspected speech sound disorders.
Methods: Single word samples were collected and were analysed for phonetic inventory and segmental accuracy. The findings were compared against the available monolingual studies.
Results: The age of mastery of phonological systems was similar to that expected in monolingual children in both languages. However, there were considerable differences in the trajectory towards in their phonological development in both languages.
Conclusions: Phonological development in KEB children was qualitatively different from respective monolingual children. The qualitative differences in KEB children can be attributed to the cross-linguistic interaction between the two phonological systems. Cross-linguistic interactions reflect reorganisation of the two phonological systems wherein a dynamic process of re-specifying phonemes and their realisation rules for each language takes place. The clinical implications are discussed.