Speech intelligibility in the community mosques of Dhaka City

Abstract

A mosque facilitates a Muslim community through different religious activities like congregational prayers, recitation and theological education. Speech in a mosque usually generates through bare voice though sound amplification system is also applied. Since no musical instrument is used in any liturgy, a mosque involves only speech acoustics. The community mosques of Dhaka city, the densely populated capital of Bangladesh, are usually designed and constructed by common people inspired from religious virtues. Seeking consultancy for acoustical design is almost never done. As an obvious consequence, there is a common crisis of speech intelligibility in different mosques, except those saved for their smaller volume and other parameters generated by chance. In a very few cases, a trial and error method is applied to solve the problem. But in most of the cases, the problem remains unsolved, putting the devotees in endless sufferings. This paper identifies the type and magnitudes of the prevailing crisis of speech intelligibility of these community mosques through instrumental measurements and questionnaire survey. This paper is also intended to establish certain research rationale and hypothesis for further research, which will propose certain parameters in acoustical design for mosques of Dhaka city in particular and of Bangladesh in general.