Comparing the vocabulary of children from marginalised Roma communities and bilingual and monolingual children in Slovakia based on the short version of the Slovak CDI-II

The main research question of this pilot study is to show how the vocabulary assessed by the Short TEKOS II (Slovak version of CDI) questionnaire differs children from marginalized Roma communities (CMRC), monolingual Slovakspeaking (MC) and bilingual Slovak-speaking (BC) children during the 17- to 36-month age range. CMCR are children living in extreme poverty in socially excluded communities. Thus, also the Romani translation of Short TEKOS II was used. The results in both, receptive and productive vocabulary, confirm our main assumption that the socio-economic status of the families, the lack of stimuli, together with lower education of mothers significantly affect the children´s vocabulary.