Stuttering and Bilingualism in Children and Adults

[ Contents | Search | Post | Reply | Next | Previous | Up ]


Re: interesting Study

From:
Date: 06 Oct 2008
Time: 21:16:03 -0500
Remote Name: 75.74.131.143

Comments

Joseph, you wrote: "In my mother tongue which is one of the dialects spoken in the North West Part of Cameroon, I stutter more. I have had speech therapy in English which has helped me a lot. However when I try to transfer the techniques I learned in English to the words I stutter on in my mother tongue, I do not do this very successfully. I think my stuttering is more in one language than the other. What can you say about this?" The first article to appear about stuttering more in one language than another, was by Dr. Eva Nkowah. She proposed that for bilingual people, we might predict that stuttering may vary from one language to another by one degree of severity. In other words, if someone stutters mildly in English, they may stutter moderately, mildly , or not at all in a second language - but we would not expect the person to stutter severely. Dr. Nkowah would expect that if someone stutters moderately in one language, they may stutter severely, moderately, or mildly in a second language -- but we would not expect the person to be completely fluent in a second language. This is another good question for further study. - B. Humphrey


Last changed: 10/06/08