The four adult refugees go through twelve, fifty minute sessions throughout the weeks. Results showed great improvement in three out of four of the adults with English articulation and prosody. The practice focused on target sounds, English phonemes, etc.

The relevance behind this article and our case study is the intervention and progress these refugees from Burma had with English. How the Burmese language, with it's different phonemes, glottal stops, and consonants had an impact on their articulation and prosody in English. With the child in our case study having more of an intelligibility in Burmese, living in the United States only being surrounded by the English language can effect the child in a variety of ways.

1. Bilingual language development: Speech variation between bilingual and monolingual children could be mistaken for speech disorder. De Lamo White and Jin stress that bilingual children typically learn two sets of phonological, syntactic, and semantic rules, which could interfere with or be transferred from one language to another. However, this is not always a speech or language disorder.

2. Assessment consideration: As the authors explain, standard speech and language test-makers typically aimed at monolingual children might not be appropriate for bilingual children. These aids might fail to capture the phonological, syntactic, and lexical variation that happens with bilingualism. The authors recommend culturally and linguistically sensitive assessment, including measures in both languages and regarding the child's exposure to both languages.

3. Cultural sensitivity: Their languages and culture dictate bilingual children's language use. These authors also call for clinicians to be aware of the child’s language culture, as it might differ between cultures in how children should learn to speak and communicate.

4. Differentiating between typical and atypical development: Part of the difficulty of evaluating bilingual children is to separate normal language variation during bilingual development from natural speech/language disorders. The authors counsel clinicians to do the whole person work, to think through the child’s language background, family history, and culture to arrive at a diagnosis.

Applying these concepts to the case of Kyaw, a Burmese-and-English-speaking child who cannot understand language, we can see how the issues raised in De Lamo White and Jin’s article directly apply. Kyaw’s difficulty in elaborating, reporting intelligibility of just 25% in Burmese and 10% in English, could be due to various aspects of bilingual development.

1. Language interference/transfer: Kyaw might be experiencing interference from one language to another, which is a regular occurrence in bilingual children. These might be differences in Burmese and English phonological rules, and she can’t pronounce words either. That might be why she becomes frustrated when communicating.

2. Cultural and linguistic considerations: Kyaw’s Burmese family has a distinct language and culture. Knowing all about her history is essential to understanding her linguistic potential. Suppose the test instruments were not culturally and linguistically relevant for someone of her ethnicity. In that case, results might incorrectly identify her speech disorders as a disease rather than a natural extension of bilingualism.

3. Assessment challenges: Kyaw is bilingual and still very young (5), so her speech disorders might be developmental, not pathological. This article focuses on the importance of appropriate assessment tools for bilingual children (evaluating her ability in both languages, considering the different language exposure, and considering the influence of her family’s resettlement as refugees).

4. Intelligibility and frustration: Kyaw is becoming increasingly frustrated, which might be due to her difficulties in communicating. Because she is still learning the language, she may feel that she is not being heard when she speaks, which can be met by emotional expressions such as crying. She may be more frustrated because—as her parents say—she barely understands both languages.

Finally, as De Lamo White and Jin write, Kyaw’s case illustrates how difficult it can be for her to evaluate bilingual children's speech and language capacity. It is challenging to draw the line between normal bilingual development and language disorder without a delicate, culturally informed analysis of the child’s linguistic background, family history, and exposure to both languages. Without understanding bilingualism in this subtle way, we might misdiagnose it.

Sui, H., Thomas, M., Tial, B. L., Roose, A., & McHenry, M. S. (2023, March 20). “understand us and acknowledge our reasons”: Perspectives from Burmese refugee families on interactions with their pediatricians. Journal of migration and health. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10112147/

L;, D. L. W. C. (n.d.). Evaluation of speech and language assessment approaches with bilingual children. International journal of language & communication disorders. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22026564/

Google. (n.d.). Burmese refugees: Letters from the Thai-burma border. Google Books. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Burmese_Refugees_Letters_from_the_Thai_B/tycsQHIXz2YC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PP2&printsec=frontcover

Google (n.d.) CHARACTER AND PERSONALITY OF THE PEOPLE IN MYANMAR https://factsanddetails.com/southeast-asia/Myanmar/sub5_5c/entry-3039.html#:~:text=Burmese%20Jokes-,BURMESE%20CHARACTER,%2C%20paranoid%2C%20boastful%20and%20arrogant.