Acoustic Analysis of Zangene-i Kurdish Monophthongs and Diphthongs

Abstract

Zangene-i Dialect belongs to the southern branch of Kurdish languages. Various researches have shown that different dialects and accents exhibit various qualities in vowels; therefore, the present study aims at investigating monophthongs and diphthongs in Zangene-i dialect. In this study 7 monophthongs (/i/, /I/, /ə/, /a/, /ɑ/, /u/, /y/) and 6 diphthongs (/ɑi/, /au/, /ei/, /oe/ /Iu/, /ya/) in CVC context based on the pronunciation of 10 native speakers (5 men and 5 women) were analyzed. The first two formants of monophthongs and diphthongs were measured and the vowel plots were drawn for men and women. For evaluating diphthongs more precisely the ROC was also calculated. The result of the ROC revealed that /ei/, /au/,/ɑi/ are closing vowels for both groups; among other diphthongs /iu/ is a closing vowel in women group and an opening vowel in men group; furthermore, /ya/ and /oe/ are opening vowels for both groups.

Keywords

• acoustic phonetics
• zangene-i kurdish
• monophthongs
• diphthongs
• roc