Vietnamese Vowels Produced by Australian Vietnamese Speakers

Abstract

This paper reported a study that acoustically examined the vowel features of Vietnamese language used by the Vietnamese community in Australia. Vowels produced by older (n=10) and younger (n=10) Vietnamese Australians residing in Brisbane, Australia, were acoustically examined and compared with those produced by corresponding older (n=10) and younger (n=10) Vietnamese residing in Ho Chi Minh/Can Tho City, Vietnam. The results showed that (i) almost all vowel tokens produced by the four groups of speakers were acoustically significantly different in vowel space; (ii) the Younger Vietnamese Australian residents’ tokens of vowels which look similar in conventional Vietnamese orthography tended to cluster with each other; (iii) the vowel productions of the Younger Vietnamese residents in Australia tended to occupy higher and/or more front regions than those of the Younger Vietnamese residents in Vietnamese group in terms of the acoustic vowel space; and (iv) the vowel tokens produced by the Older Vietnamese residents in Australia and Older Vietnamese residents in Vietnam groups occupied different regions in the acoustic vowel space.