Acoustic Analysis of Mandarin Vowels Pronounced by Macao and Hong Kong Cantonese Speakers

Treball de fi de màster en Lingüística Teòrica i AplicadaThis study compares the vowel production of Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese by Macao and Hong Kong Cantonese speakers. There are 5 volunteers of Macao native Cantonese speakers and 5 volunteers of Hong Kong native Cantonese speakers. The 10 Mandarin vowels and the 11 Cantonese vowels are pronounced by these groups. And there are 5 volunteers of native Mandarin speakers produce the same Mandarin vowels. All participants are female speakers. The acoustic vowel qualities of formant one (F1) and formant two (F2) values of these two languages were measured and analyzed. Result shows that Macao speakers have good performance on F1, the height of the tongue is closed to the F1 of Mandarin vowels. They can identify new vowels and pronounce Mandarin vowels more native-like than Hong Kong speakers as Hong Kong speakers adapted their native vowels to produce some Mandarin vowels