The presence of Haitians in the United States and their dominant use of Kreyol present a unique challenge for professionals in the field of communication disorders in
this country. The discipline of speech-language pathology has traditionally used phonetic transcription to describe differences in production between the mainstream and non- mainstream speaker. These descriptions would then aide in the diagnosis and treatment of communication disorders. Recently, acoustic analysis has been used to provide a more objective description of vowel production. However, the use of acoustic analysis to investigate differences between language groups has not been widely used.
This study provides an acoustic description of Kreyol and English vowels spoken
by monolingual and bilingual Haitian American children. Speakers, ages 5-6 years,
identified pictures using either Kreyol or English words that contained target vowels.
Vowel durations, as well as the first two formants, were measured and compared across 3 groups (Haitian American Bilingual, Haitian American Monolingual and Non-Haitian)
and across gender.
Durational results for Kreyol and English vowels indicated significant differences
in the durations for individual vowels, as well as gender differences. However, no
significant group differences were observed.
Spectral results for Kreyol vowels revealed that acoustically, the Kreyol vowel
space matches non-acoustic descriptions. Differences were observed between bilingual
and monolingual Haitian speakers' production of the vowel, /o/ only. Differences in the
production of other vowels were insignificant. During production of English vowels,
monolingual (English) Haitian American speakers' productions were no different than
their non-Haitian counterparts. No significant group differences (between Haitian
American Bilingual and Non-Haitian) speakers were observed. Gender differences were
noted for both Kreyol and English vowels.
These results indicate that bilingual children as young as five years old can
produce vowel sounds in their second language (English) like a monolingual native
speaker of English. This has implications for the speech-language pathologist that works
with young bilingual speakers.