Dominantnost jezika dvojezicnih govornika talijanskog I hrvatskog jezika [Language dominance in bilingual speakers of Italian and Croatian language]

Because of the high variability in any bilingual population, it is of a great importance to control for language dominance in both research and language assessment. This control is crucial in research in order to form unified groups of participants according to language dominance. In the language assessment of bilingual children, determining language dominance should be a priority. Children exposed to two languages from an early age may acquire them at a slower rate when compared to their monolingual piers. While this lag is hardly noticeable in some children, for others it is significant. Without knowledge about the child’s language skills in the other, non-assessed language, it is impossible to determine if the results of language assessment point to the dominance of one language over another or general language difficulties. In bilingual areas of Croatia, such as Rijeka and Istria, this can be quite a challenge. While language dominance has generally been measured using a large number of different methods, there is no universally accepted procedure. This research uses the results of the Italian and Croatian versions of the TROG test to determine language dominance. Participants were 56 preschool-aged children attending kindergartens with an Italian language programme in Rijeka and Istria. Participants were preselected by their kindergarten teachers as children that might be balanced bilinguals. Using the differences in results between both TROG tests, approximately 70% of children were placed in a balanced bilinguals group. No differences were shown between groups of participants from Rijeka and Istria.