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From: Anelise Bohnen
Date: 14 Oct 2011
Time: 14:33:29 -0500
Remote Name: 187.36.5.131
Dear Florence Unfortunately, I do not know if people who speak more than one language will have greater chances of developing stutter, if I understood your question correctly. My clinical experience shows that bilingual children are likely to stutter in both languages. Children who have speech/language difficulties in their native language and learn a second one at around 4 or 5 years of age, seem to have a tendency of carrying over the same difficulties to the second language. I see this especially in phonologic, fluency and word finding problems. And adults who stutter, usually do not stutter when learning a second language. But, as soon as the second language becomes more automatic, stuttering appears again. But this is just information I gather from my clinical practicum. I did not research these matters in a formal way. I guess we should try this! I am very appreciative of these observations because English is my second language and I can relate to how hard the learning processes are. Thank you for the questions. Cheers. Anelise