Vocabulary Development in the Toddlers in Nepali

Abstract

Background: In the Terai region of Nepal, the most common developmental and behavioral problem in children was speech and language problem. However, no research has been done on this specific problem. This research will cover late talking in Kathmandu along with language specific developments in the terms of lexical development. Objective: The aim of this research was to replicate the cross-linguistic LDS study carried out in many countries. The main objectives were to find the effects of language, age, and gender in Nepali-English comparison, to compare the lexical acquisition for the Nepali sample with US sample of the same general size and age range, and to compare percentage use scores in Nepali late talkers with those of younger Nepali children with vocabularies of the same size. Method: A cross sectional study was carried out in Kathmandu. 145 samples were recruited through non probability sampling. Language Development Survey tool was used in order to get the required data. Analysis was done through SPSS. Result: The effect of age was large whereas the effect of country was small on the total vocabulary of children. The overall effect of gender was not significant which was surprising. Although girls had higher scores than boys in the U.S. but not in Nepal, the gender x country interaction was not significant, nor were any other interactions. The Q correlation between Nepali and US sample was 0.40 (p< .01). The percentage of children who were late talkers in Nepali sample was 15.9% (23 out of 145) and 6.2% (17 out of 274) in the US sample. Percentage use scores between late talkers and vocabulary-size-matched younger children were correlated at 0.71 for Nepali and .83 for English (p<0.01). Conclusion: Many word matches were found between the top 100 words in Nepali and English which suggests similarity across languages especially during the earliest phase of acquisition of language. Moreover, the late talkers learning Nepali and English had similar word acquisition as that of younger vocabulary size matched children which can be utilized for clinical intervention.