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.

Some female voice actors play boys’ and men’s roles in Japan anime. I conducted two experiments investigating in what respect their speech differs in men’s and women’s roles.

In the first experiment, I observed a female voice actor’s speech in men’s and women’s roles. Since her speech has already been analyzed regarding F0 features and vowel formants, I deal with features of final intonation in this research note.

In the other experiment, 22 Japanese native speakers listened to her speech and judged the personality of the roles, because research has shown that intonation affects the image of the personality of the speakers.

The results were as follows:

(1) In women’s roles, the actor often used rising intonation even the utterances were not question sentences.

(2) In men’s roles, she used different intonation types depending on the personality of the role.

(3) She often used rise-fall intonation on open and less conscientious roles regardless of the gender of the roles.