The first fifty expressive words of typically developing children speaking Vietnamese in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Abstract
Introduction: The first 50 expressive words is a milestone marking an important transition: completing the initial vocabulary building, ready for word combination. Currently, there is no basic research providing a list of the first 50 words in Vietnamese.
Objective: Surveying the characteristics of the first 50 single words and the age at which children can say these first 50 single words, in order to provide basic data for Speech Therapy work in Vietnam.
Methods: Cross-sectional descriptive study design on normal Vietnamese-speaking children in Ho Chi Minh City who came to be vaccinated at the City Children’s Hospital, from January 2023 to September 2023. The data were collected through the mother’s verbal diary.
Results: 491 different words were collected (nouns 54.4%, verbs 28.1%, adjectives 8.6%, pronouns 6.3%, number words 0.8% and function words 1.8%). The list of 50 words with the most frequency includes 23 nouns, 12 verbs, 10 pronouns, 3 adjectives and 2 function words. The average age of children saying their first word is 11.5 ± 2.5 months and reaching 50 words is 21.2 ± 2.2 months. Conclusion: Normal children in this study could say their first single word from 9 – 12 months and had 50 simple words before 2 years of age. A list of the first 50 Vietnamese single words is determined.
