Thai Tones Produced by Tonal and Nontonal Language Speakers: An Acoustic Study

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to analyze the acoustic characteristics of Thai tones produced by tonal language speakers, namely Vietnamese and Burmese, and non-tonal language speakers, namely Khmer and Malay, in citation form and connected speech. The test words in citation form and connected speech comprised five tones, which were the Mid tone, the Low tone, the Falling tone, the High tone, and the Rising tone occurring in non-checked and checked syllables. The informants were twenty-four Vietnamese, Burmese, Khmer, and Malay native speakers with high experience in Thai (three speakers for each language) and low experience in Thai (three speakers for each language). The informants’ speech was recorded directly on to a computer. The fundamental frequencies (F0) of tones were measured using Praat Version 5.1.43 and then converted to semitones.