An acoustic-phonetic study on the pronunciation of d/gi/r in Southern Vietnamese dialects

Abstract

The typical dialectal characteristics of the northern and southern dialects of Vietnamese are the initial consonant d/gi/r phonetic value. In this paper, we surveyed the pronunciation of the initial consonant d/gi/r in the southern dialects of Vietnamese, based on previous research on dialectal pronunciation markers. The results showed that the initial consonant d/gi had a voiced palatal plosive [Ɉ], which was not found in previous studies. In addition, in the case of the initial consonant r, which showed phonetic distortions in the previous study, was confirmed relatively stable as a voiced retroflex tap [ɽ]. The “Dictionary of Linguistics”and other sources state that the phonetic dichotomy between the initial consonants d/gi and r is preserved in the southern dialects, but no specific data are given. In this paper, we show that there is a phonetic dichotomy between d-gi and r in the modern Southern dialects, based on acoustic phonetics analysis.