An Acoustic Analysis of Penang Malay Monophthongs Among the Jawi Peranakan Community

Abstract

This study examines the acoustic features of the monophthongs of Penang Malay (PM) based on the frequencies of the first (F1) and second (F2) formants as produced by five selected female speakers who are of the Jawi Peranakan (JP) community in Penang, Malaysia. This study is significant as it describes the monophthongs of PM because previous studies have focused on the acoustic analysis of Standard Malay (SM) and analyzed PM from impressionistic and phonological aspects. The target vowels are [a], [i], [u], [ɛ], [ɔ], [ə], [e], and [o]. A series of words were used to elicit data from the speakers. The tokens produced by the speakers were recorded and analyzed using Praat version 6.0.50. The two formants were analyzed using the Formant Frequency Model, and independent samples t-tests were conducted. The findings reveal that the PM participants mostly produced vowels following impressionistic studies of past researchers. However, PM speakers did not distinguish between [ɛ] and [e] as the sounds were conflated as one vowel. These results challenge past claims of homogeneity between PM and Kedah Malay (KM). This study expands knowledge on PM’s phonetics and highlights avenues for future research.