The Quantification of Speech Intelligibility of Malay Words by Means of Corner Vowels

Muhammad ‘Aasim Asyafi’ie bin Ahmad; Mokhtar bin Harun; Md. Najib bin Ibrahim; Mohd Ibrahim Shapiai; Puspa Inayat binti Khalid; Siti Zaleha Abdul Hamid

doi:10.15866/ireme.v10i4.8621

The Quantification of Speech Intelligibility of Malay Words by Means of Corner Vowels

Muhammad ‘Aasim Asyafi’ie bin Ahmad^(1*), Mokhtar bin Harun⁽²⁾, Md. Najib bin Ibrahim⁽³⁾, Mohd Ibrahim Shapiai⁽⁴⁾, Puspa Inayat binti Khalid⁽⁵⁾, Siti Zaleha Abdul Hamid⁽⁶⁾

^(*) Corresponding author

Authors' affiliations

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15866/ireme.v10i4.8621

Abstract

Speech intelligibility is important for communication. Many techniques have been developed to quantify it. This includes the frequency responses of corner vowels. However, such techniques have not been used in Malay language. The purpose of this study is to analyze the frequency response in order to quantify speech intelligibility of spoken Malay words. The study was done by playing 15 recorded Malay words that were spoken by two speakers, in anechoic room and reverberant room. From this, the value of first formant frequency (F1) and second formant frequency (F2) were obtained. F1 and F2 were then used to derive the differences of F2 and F1 (F2-F1) and to calculate the vowel working space (VWS) area. This study found that speech intelligibility affects the value of F2-F1 of the vowel /i/. For speech with low intelligibility, it was also found that the VWS area is smaller compared to the one obtained from high intelligibility speech.
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Keywords

Spoken Malay Words; Speech Intelligibility; Formant Frequency

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