Abstract
This research intends to provide a comprehensive account of phonetic description of English vowels focusing on gender- based differences in two under- researched nonnative English varieties, Nigerian English, specifically produced by 20male Hausa ESL speakers, and Malaysian English, specifically produced by 20female Chinese ESL speakers. The data was collected using the 10English pure vowels as stimuli. These vowels are (/iː/, /ɪ/, /e/, /æ/, /ʌ/, /ɜ:/, /ɔ/, /ɔ:/, /ʊ/, /uː/. the participants were recorded after they were instructed to produce the vowels while comfortability sitting in noise free environment with the aid of PRAAT software developed by Boersma, and Weenink (2013). The data was analyzed acoustically to reveal the formant values of the vowels under investigation. The results were used in pictorially drawing the vowel spaces for both the participants for comparison on the bases of gender. The finding reveals that the produced vowel space of the Hausa male speakers appears to be the smaller compared with the one produced by Chinese female participants,despite both being non-native and the L1 transfer (Hausa vs. Chinese) shapes vowel positioning, the gender effect was found to be evident in the production of vowel space. This phenomenon is pronounced and consistent with global phonetic patterns. These findings emphasize the importance of including gender as a variable in second language phonology research, pronunciation teaching, and speech technology development.
Keywords: Comparative, Gender Effects, Phonetic Description, English Vowel Space, Malaysian Chinese Female, Nigerian Male Hausa, ESL Speakers
DOI: www.doi.org/10.36349/sojolics.2025.v01i01.034
author/Bello, H., & Abdullahi, J.
journal/Sokoto JOLICS 1(1) | June 2025 |
