Vocal Fundamental Frequency and Perturbation Measurements of Vowels by Normal Malaysian Chinese Adults

The acoustic properties of vowel phonation vary across cultures. These specific characteristics, including vowel fundamental frequency (F0) and perturbation measures (Absolute Jitter [Jita], Jitter [Jitt], Relative Average Perturbation [RAP], five-point Period Perturbation Quotient [PPQ5], Absolute Shimmer [ShdB], Shimmer [Shim], and 11-point Amplitude Perturbation Quotient [APQ11]) are not well established for Malaysian Chinese adults. This article investigates the F0 and perturbation measurements of sustained vowels in 60 normal Malaysian Chinese adults using acoustical analysis. Malaysian Chinese females had significantly higher F0 than Malaysian males in all six vowels. However, there were no significant differences in F0 across the vowels for each gender. Significant differences between vowels were observed for Jita, Jitt, PPQ5, ShdB, Shim, and APQ11 among Chinese males, whereas significant differences between vowels were observed for all the perturbation parameters among Chinese females. Chinese males had significantly higher Jita and APQ11 in the vowels than Chinese females, whereas no significant differences were observed between males and females for Jitt, RAP, PPQ5, and Shim. Cross-ethnic comparisons indicate that F0 of vowel phonation varies within the Chinese ethnic group and across other ethnic groups. The perturbation measures cannot be simply compared, where the measures may vary significantly across different speech analysis softwares.