Arabic Speech Segmentation: Automatic Verses Manual Method and Zero Crossing Measurements

Abstract

In this paper, a comparison between the automatic and manual approach of speech segmentation for the Arabic speech is conducted. In this approach, the automatic method, using the energy level measurement is compared to the manual segmentation procedure. The traditional zero crossing method commonly used for speech processing is also included in this work. The energy measurement method is based on dividing the uttered tokens into different levels. For instance, the Arabic language phonemes are divided into two energy regions: unvoiced phonemes which can be categorized as low energy include the sounds / س / (/s/) and / ه / (/h/). On the other hand, vowels and semi-vowels such as / / ( فتحه ) (/ ‘a /) and / و / (/w/) are labeled as high energy. Voiced fricatives, for instance, the sounds / ز / (/z/) and / /ع (/aa/) are classified as high energy phonemes.