Prevalence of English (L2) Lexicon in Conversations of Waray (L1) Speakers: What are we doing with these children?

The intermeshing of languages is a natural feature in multilingual societies, like the Philippines. Using the corpus-based design, this study investigated the prevalence of English words that the 3-5-year-old Waray children use as they learn to speak Waray as their first language (L1). Participants of this study were 397 pairs, or 794, of children from Leyte, Samar, and Eastern Samar. About 30-minute conversation per domain was recorded. All the transcripts of these conversations of Waray children, which were used as the corpus (85,503 words/a total of 595.5 hours of conversation) taken from three domains, such as the home, playground, and school, were uploaded to the 3NS Corpora Project. The software generated the first 1,000 high-frequency L2 words mixed in the Waray conversations. Sixteen semantic domains were identified. Semantic domains containing relatively more words were action words, toys/superheroes, and animals. Semantic domains with relatively small numbers of words were shapes, parts of the body, and colors. The children’s language as apparent in the semantic domains is strongly influenced by culture and immersion to the environment which led them to mish-mash. Moreover, lexis development is simultaneous with grammar development. This result means that children are learning English (L2) grammar as they acquire the grammar of Waray (L1) which is abundantly existent in the culture and environment where these children are immersed. However, further research must be conducted to validate if these children are learning English as they acquire their L1.