Usage of onomatopoeic and mimetic words in Vietnamese-Korean bilingual compared to Korean monolingual families [베트남어-한국어사용 다문화 가정과 한국 가정의 의성의태어 사용 비교]

Abstract

Objectives: This study investigates the differences in the patterns of using onomatopoeic and mimetic words in Vietnamese-Korean bilingual and Korean monolingual mothers and children. Methods: Twenty-one Vietnamese-Korean (V-K) families (13 children and 8 mothers) and 25 Korean (K) families (14 children and 11 mothers) participated in this study. Children were aged from 3;0 to 6;1 (in year;month), and there were no significant group differences in their vocabulary scores. We used a picture-explaining task (which is divided into the object task and the sound-action task) to investigate how participants perform differently when describing pictures depicting objects and movements. Additionally, we conducted a picture-association task to choose the correct picture from four options through listening to the auditory stimuli of recorded words as quickly as possible. Results: V-K bilingual mothers showed significantly lower performance on the picture-explaining object and sound-action task than K monolingual mothers. But, there was no significant difference between V-K bilingual and K monolingual children in the picture-explaining object task. In the picture-explaining sound-action task, however, V-K bilingual children showed lower performance than K monolingual children. In the picture-association task, there were significant differences in accuracy and reaction times between V-K bilingual and K monolingual mothers and children. Conclusion: Although no significant differences were found in the language abilities of the two children groups, both mothers and children in bilingual and monolingual groups showed significant differences in using onomatopoeic and mimetic words. Therefore, onomatopoeic and mimetic words are a unique characteristic of Korean and are important for efficient communication. © 2019 Korean Academy of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology.