Acoustic Characteristics of Vowels by Normal Malaysian Malay Young Adults

The acoustic characteristics of sustained vowel have been widely investigated across various languages and ethnic groups. These acoustic measures, including fundamental frequency (F-0), jitter (Jitt), relative average perturbation (RAP), five-point period perturbation quotient (PPQ5), shimmer (Shim), and 11-point amplitude perturbation quotient (APQ11) are not well established for Malaysian Malay young adults. This article studies the acoustic measures of Malaysian Malay adults using acoustical analysis. The study analyzed six sustained Malay vowels of 60 normal native Malaysian Malay adults with a mean of 21.19 years. The F-0 values of Malaysian Malay males and females were reported as 134.85 +/- 18.54 and 238.27 +/- 24.06 Hz, respectively. Malaysian Malay females had significantly higher F-0 than that of males for all the vowels. However, no significant differences were observed between the genders for the perturbation measures in all the vowels, except RAP in /e/. No significant F-0 differences between the vowels were observed. Significant differences between the vowels were reported for all perturbation measures in Malaysian Malay males. As for Malaysian Malay females, significant differences between the vowels were reported for Shim and APQ11. Multiethnic comparisons indicate that F-0 varies between Malaysian Malay and other ethnic groups. However, the perturbation measures cannot be directly compared, where the measures vary significantly across different speech analysis softwares.