Nasalance in Arabic-Speaking Jordanians: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Objective: This investigation sought to establish nasalance scores for Jordanian Arabic (JA) speakers, to develop nasalance speech stimuli for JA speakers, and to compare JA adult nasalance scores with those of Standard American English (SAE) speakers. Subjects and Methods: Participants included normal native JA speakers (n = 100; males/females and adults/children) and adult SAE speakers (n = 49). Four speech tasks for JA speakers were developed, which included repetition of vowels, syllables, words, and sentences. Parallel speech tasks were also developed for SAE speakers. A nasometer (Nasometer II 6400; PENTAX Medical, Montvale, NJ, USA) was used to establish nasalance scores for all speakers across all speech tasks. Results: Nasalance values were established for adult and child JA speakers. The nasalance values were higher for Jordanian adults than for Jordanian children. No differences in nasalance were found between male and female Arabic speakers for nonnasal elements. JA speakers were significantly more nasal than SAE speakers on selected speech tasks. Conclusions: Nasalance values for JA speakers were established for both adults and children, and Arabic speech materials were developed. The results of this investigation add to the growing body of research documenting differences in nasalance scores for normal speakers across different languages.