The Acoustic Analysis of Initial Fricative and Affricate Consonants of Thai Gay Men

Abstract

            The language used by the gay men community differs from standard Thai in term of pronunciation, lexicon and grammar.  The characteristics of gay men speech tend to vary from heterosexual Thai male and female speech.  However, there has been little linguistic research on Thai gay men community.  In this paper, we examine whether Thai gay men speech has similar acoustic properties with carried out our research by eliciting data from three groups of people 1) five Thai native respect to duration and the peak frequency of frication as Thai native male and female speech.  We hypothesize that the fricative and affricates duration of Thai native gay men speech is different to that of Thai and American English native male. The fricative and affricates duration of Thai native gay men speech is similar to that of Thai and American English native female. The fricative and affricates peak frequency of Thai native gay men speech is different to that of Thai and American English native male, and the fricative and affricates peak frequency of Thai native gay men speech is similar to that of Thai and American English native female.  We gay men, 2) one Thai native male and one female speaker and 3) one American English native male and one female speaker.  The Thai tokens were four initial fricatives and affricates /f, s, ʨ, ʨ^h/ from common and slang words.  All tokens were put in eight framed sentences with a total of 112 words.  The American English; on the other hand, has eight initial English fricatives and affricates /f, v, s, z, ʃ, ʒ, dʒ, tʃ/. All tokens were put in eight framed sentences with a total of 32 words.  The recorded speech was acoustically analyzed using the Praat program. The results revealed that the acoustic properties of initial fricatives and affricates used in slang were significantly longer in duration than common words.  In addition, the mean fricative and affricates duration of Thai native gay men speech was similar to that of Thai native female speakers.  We also found that in Thai gay men speech, the frequency of fricative and affricate consonants was closely correlated with that of American English native female and Thai native male.