It is known that the pronunciations of "hi" and "shi" in Japanese are easily confused. For example, in dialects of the Kanto and Tohoku regions, "east" is pronounced "shigashi" instead of "higashi", or "7". The phenomenon of pronouncing "moon" as "hichigatsu" instead of "shichigatsu" is also observed in Japan.The cause is thought to be "because the positions of the tongues are similar when pronouncing", but it is not clear how "hi" and "shi" are pronounced separately. rice field.
This time, the research teams of Toyohashi University of Technology and the National Institute for Japanese Language and Language have conducted a real-time MRI that can observe the movement of the tongue during pronunciation in order to clarify the factors that make the difference between the sounds of "hi" and "shi". Using this, 10 subjects of Tokyo dialect speakers observed the positions of the tongues of "hi" and "shi" when they pronounced "this is Hishigata".As a result, in the three subjects, the difference between the sounds of "hi" and "shi" can be discerned even though the positions of the front and back of the tongue when pronouncing "hi" and "shi" were almost the same. It is said that it was possible.
Therefore, next, we constructed a model that imitated the shape of the mouth, and simulated the air flow and sound generation during pronunciation with a supercomputer.As a result, even if the front and back positions of the tongue are the same for "hi" and "shi", the difference between the consonants of "hi" and "shi" is created by changing the shape of the tongue in the left-right direction. I understood.Until now, in phonetics, the classification of consonants has been mainly based on the difference in the position of the tongue in the anterior-posterior direction, so even if the tongue is in the same position in the anterior-posterior direction, the pronunciation can be distinguished by the shape of the tongue in the left-right direction. Says that it is a new discovery.
It is also expected that this knowledge will be applied to the training of speech therapists for people who cannot distinguish specific pronunciations such as articulation disorders.
Paper information:[Journal of the Acoustical Society of America] Aeroacoustic differences between the Japanese fricatives [ɕ] and [ç]
