THE PRONUNCIATION SKILLS OF BILINGUAL PRESCHOOL AND PRIMARY SCHOOL CHILDREN SPEAKING GREEK AND RUSSIAN

Abstract

This article presents the results of the experiment
conducted in two phases between 2004 and 2006. The
author observed natural bilingualism of children growing up in
mixed Greek-Russian families from birth being constantly exposed
to the two languages, i.e. trying to learn two languages
at once. 80 children - bilinguals have been examined. All of
them were from the families with both Russian and Greek as
languages of communication. The observation has resulted
in the following conclusions: the pronunciation skills of bilinguals
are not completely formed so they replace, blend and
distort the sound image of phonemes making the word image
unstable; the development of bilingual pronunciation skills undergoes
several stages