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Speech-language pathologists focus on the details of their clients' communication difficulties. This is essential in order to carry out therapy appropriately. They often have less time to focus on the state of the language variety, for example Australian English or New Zealand English, in which they are doing therapy. Language variety becomes salient when a speech-language pathologist moves countries and adjustments must be made to his/her habitual clinical expectations. However the local variety can become no more than “background noise” if the clinician continues to practise within a local area. It is essential to examine the details of the local variety of our language in order to keep our perceptions honed and our connections current. This paper will reflect on connections between New Zealand and Australian varieties of English—their shared origins, similarities and differences and changes in progress. Relevance to speech-language pathologists will be emphasized. A sound file is provided (online at ww...

This study investigates the effect of dialect on phonological analyses in Chinese-influenced Malaysian English (ChME) speaking children. A total of 264 typically-developing ChME speaking children aged 3-7 years participated in this cross-sectional study. A single word naming task consisting of 195 words was used to elicit speech from the children. The samples obtained were transcribed phonetically and analysed descriptively and statistically. Phonological analyses were completed for speech sound accuracy, age of consonant acquisition, percentage of phonological process occurrence, and age of suppression for phonological processes. All these measurements differed based on whether or not ChME dialectal features were considered correct, with children gaining higher scores when ChME dialect features were considered correct. The findings of the present study provide guidelines for Malaysian speech-language pathologists and stress the need to appropriately consider ChME dialectal features in the phonological analysis of ChME speaking children. They also highlight the issues in accurate differential diagnosis of speech impairment for speech-language pathologists working with children from any linguistically diverse background.