Acoustic Analysis of English Vowel Formant Frequencies Produced by Indonesian Native Speakers

Rudha Widagsa, M.A. (2015) Acoustic Analysis of English Vowel Formant Frequencies Produced by Indonesian Native Speakers. Discussion Paper. The 2nd International Language and Language Teaching Conference, Sanata Dharma University.

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Abstract

Each vowel has a unique structure of formant frequency which indicates the quality of the vowel. Formants have long been known as suited parameters for describing vowel production due to its correlation with traditional alticulatory transcription of vowel. This study is intended to describe the characteristic of English vowels production of Indonesian native speakers (L2) based on formant frequencies. The frequencies of first formants (F1) and second formants (F2) of the vowels are analysed to describe the characteristics of English-L2 vowels production and perception. This study involves 10 students in English Department (PBI-UPY) who are native speakers of Indonesian as respondents. The data are analysed through several steps, firstly, data are collected through listening and recording 11 /hVd/ words representing 11 types of English vowels, secondly, the recordings are processed using PRAAT software to figure out the frequencies of F1 and F2 of each vowel (values in Hertz). Finally, both formants are plotted in Bark Scale to ease the process of describing the characteristic of English-L2 vowels production, simultaneously, the English-L2 F1 and F2 vowels are compared with similar vowels of English native speakers to figure out the differences so that the perception can be concluded. The result shows that the English vowels production of English-L2 tend to be very close to the nearest Indonesian vowels. It is proved by some distinct characteristics of English-L2 vowel productions compared with English-L1. The major differences appear in the production of vowel /i/ in ‗heed‘ and /ɪ/ in ‗hid‘ where the F1 and F2 frequencies of both vowels are identical (F1 403.5 Hz, F2 2070.4 Hz for /i/ and F1 416.5, F2 2065.5 for /ɪ/), English-L2 Learners are not able to discern the differences, both are pronounced as ‗hid‘. Another major distinctive utterance is /ɒ/ in ‗hod‘ where F1 597.3 Hz and F2 1348.7 Hz, this vowel is closely perceived as /ɔ/ as in Indonesian ‗tokoh‘ and the frequencies are in common with the vowel /ɔ/ as in ‗hoard‘ produced English-L1. Futhermore, based on distant differences between F1 and F2, vowel /ɒ/ of English-L2 sounds more ―front‖ instead of ―back‖.

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