A COMPARATIVE ACOUSTIC ANALYSIS OF DIPHTHONGS PRONUNCIATION BY THE STUDENTS OF FAZAIA SCHOOLS AT KARACHI PAKISTAN
Faisal Irfan, Mahmoona Shahzadi, Syed Abuzar Naqvi, Mohsin Naseer · Hamdard Islamicus · 2020
In this study, diphthongs pronunciation of Fazaia Schools Students is acoustically compared with the diphthong pronunciation of Standard British English (SBE). The results of this study are important to linguists in the understanding, teaching, correction of language, and the development of pronunciation dictionaries. This is important in the context Pakistani English language speakers and particularly for the students and teachers of Fazaia schools system in Pakistan where many speakers use English as official language on regular basis. Further importance lies in the use of these acoustical models as a means of improving automatic speech recognition, realistic computer-speech generation and automatic accent recognition. The study will also aid in the study of acoustic phonetics. The experimental work was performed on a database that was the speech recording of diphthongs of Fazaia School’s students as shown in the table. The diphthongs sounds were recorded in single utterances of normal words having diphthong sound. Total 100 participants from four schools, 25 participants from each school were selected. The diphthongs pronunciation was then compared with standard British English pronunciation on the basis of Formant frequencies and time duration. This involved the calculation of the resonance peak tracks (formants) of the voiced speech, visual verification of the formant tracks (F1 & F2) and then producing a graphical representation of the locations of formant frequencies and time duration of the diphthongs.