“Ciao, amica.” Sitting in Italian class Junior Noy Phimphasone tries to understand the new vocabulary. What she does not know is that the difference in the way vowels are formed in the mouth changes the way they sound. This change changes the wavelength, or frequency, of the vowel, changing her perception of how to say the English word in Italian. This difference in word formation could cause problems in learning a new language.
The University of Kansas Laboratory of Phonetics and Psycholinguistics (KUPPL) is eight months into research on different vowel formations and the perception of different vowel sounds in different languages. The research is lead by Dr. Allard Jongman of KU who says there are differences in vowel quality, or tone, based on the position of the tongue and lips. For example, the lips form an ‘a’ in bought changing the tone of the vowels. These differences cause speech differences which result in sound differences. Researchers at the phonetics lab hope to find out if these differences have an affect on listeners of different languages.
“There are different sounds between Italian and English and it makes it hard sometimes to understand how to form new words,” said Phimphasone.
Researchers have been studying vowels for more than 50 years and phonetics was studied in ancient India, but not everything is known about language. KUPPL researchers are conducting a new study about the vowel frequencies, hoping to see if differences in these vowel frequencies change the listeners understanding of the vowels. This is the first cross language study done with vowel frequencies. The results could change the way that new languages are taught around the world, by specializing curriculum to match vowel formation.
Jongman is leading the study to find the answer to the difference in vowels. The first step he says is comparing the perception by speakers of different languages. KUPPL researchers collaborate with researchers in Germany to study native German and Turkish speakers. Jongman says they completed the German and Turkish study six to eight months ago and will begin testing American English speakers at KU in mid May.
KUPPL researchers look at the difference in two specific frequencies in the vowels. F1 is the first format, which has a low sound. F2 is the second format with a high sound. Jongman asks if a native language has a lot of different vowels primarily along the F1 frequency, would it make the listener more or less sensitive to subtle differences along the same frequency.
“At first glance, you may expect that speakers of such a language would be more sensitive. However, there is also evidence that suggests that speakers ignore acoustic differences that do not serve to distinguish distinct vowels,” said Jongman.
The study found that German listeners were more sensitive to frequency differences then Turkish listeners.
“It could be that Turkish listeners are not sensitive to subtle F2 differences within the grand categories,” said Kazumi Maniwa, at the University of Konstanz, Germany, “Alternatively, it may have resulted from differences in the two languages’ vowel inventories: German involves somewhat more purely F2 distinctions in this region.”
The main purpose of the study is for basic knowledge. There are a few applications that could benefit from the study. Jongman says that with the findings it may be able to help students learning a second language. He says that with the findings teachers might be able to help students by teaching the new language based on the formation of vowels of their native language. For example, if teaching Spanish, the teacher would teach it differently to native German speakers than Turkish based on the sensitivity to certain vowel formations.
With the German and Turkish part of the study complete and English almost underway Jongman and his colleagues hope to study speakers of Spanish, Greek, Japanese and Finnish soon. Before starting new studies, Jongman and the rest of the researchers will present their findings in Athens, Greece in August.
“I think that would be awesome if you could teach for a certain language,” said Phimphasone