Long-term average spectrum of te reo Māori

Abstract

Te reo Māori, the language of the indigenous people of New Zealand, lacks some consonants common in English, notably the fricative /s/ and voiceless plosives. However, Māori pronunciation has adapted over time and exposure to English. Thus, there is reason to expect that the spectrum of spoken Māori differs from that of New Zealand English, but that the magnitude of the difference may be decreasing. We measured the long-term average spectrum (LTAS) of the speech of Māori-English bilinguals, using recordings from a longitudinal study of Māori speech. The oldest talkers in the database were born in the late 19th century. Female and male, talkers, and both native and non-native speakers of Māori were included. The LTAS was determined for each talker and each language. For individual talkers, the average spectrum had consistently higher amplitude for English than Māori, for frequencies above approximately 2 kHz. Across talkers, the mean difference at 8 kHz was approximately 8 dB, for all but one group. The exception was younger female Māori L2 talkers, for whom the difference was only 3 dB. These observations are consistent with the consonant inventory of te reo Māori, and they also provide potentially useful information about ongoing changes in the language.