Perceived Accentedness in Monolingual and Simultaneous Bilingual Children

Abstract

Previous research on accentedness in simultaneous bilinguals has produced inconsistent results and has focused on adult speakers. The current study explores the question of whether simultaneous bilingual children are perceived to have stronger accents in comparison to monolingual children. Adult participants were asked to rate the accentedness of English-Mandarin simultaneous bilingual children and English monolingual children. The difference in ratings between the two groups was not found to be statistically significant. It is concluded that simultaneous bilingual children seem not to differ in accentedness when compared to monolingual children, which has a number of social and theoretical implications.