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The SA Communicative Development Inventories (SA-CDIs) are a set of questionnaires for each official South African language that parents complete to tell us about their child's language and communication. 

The SA-CDI project will establish:

  • the first comprehensive overview of South African children's first stages in language development
  • the first word-learning norms for children aged 8 to 30 months across the whole of South Africa
  • a free-to-use, anonymised online child language base, in collaboration with SADiLaR
  • a quick, easy and inexpensive checklist that can be used by professionals to assess children's language

 

For more info, please visit our SA CDI website: https://sa-cdi.org/​ 

Phase 1

In Phase 1, the team set out to develop and adapt the long form of our CDI for the following languages: Afrikaans, isiXhosa, South African English, Sesotho, Setswana and Xitsonga. 

Phase 2

In Phase 1, the team set out to develop and adapt the long form of our CDI for the following languages: isiNdebele, isiZulu, Sepedi, siSwati and Tshivenda. 

CDI Validation (2022-2024)

After we finished adapting the short form, we were ready to move on to validation of our CDI. This validation included two types of data collection, one for infants and one for toddlers. 

2022

In 2022, we set out to validate our Afrikaans and isiXhosa CDIs.

2023

In 2023, we finished up data collection for Afrikaans, isiXhosa and South African English. We also started data collection for the validation of our isiNdebele, isiZulu, siSwati and Tshivenda CDIs. 

Norming (2024-2026)

We have started the preparations for norming our CDIs. The first language we will be norming is isiXhosa.​​