Experimental Study On Affricate And Fricative In Chinese Language Acquisition Among Thai Students

The research is accomplished by using the methods of questionnaire, perceptual listening analysis and acoustics pattern analysis. To study on Thai students'Affricate condition in single syllable, disyllable and speech flow in Chinese Language pronunciation. A sonogram analysis on fricative in relation to single syllables has been done and came to the conclusion that:1. Length on consonants:Though the aspirate is higher than unaspirate in the same place of articulation among Thai students, there is no significant difference. The reasons could be:(1) weak consciousness of aspirate, (2) language proficiency level of speakers is different, and (3) differences in individual speakers'pronunciation.2. Initial-finial:The unaspirate phonetics value in single syllable among Thai students is higher than native speaker, whilst aspirate phonetics value is lower than native speaker. The phonetic values in both disyllable and speech flow are lower than native speaker. Irregular initial-finial is the main reason which caused "Thai accent" among Thai students.3. The value of closure length and voice interval is higher than native speaker, which has shown that Thai students take more time to pronounce affricate. Hence, their fluency and proficiency of Chinese language are lower than native speaker.4. Center frequency:The center frequency of s[s] is lower than native speaker, but sh[s], x[c] are close to native speaker. There is discrepancy between two groups in minimum frequency. The difference shown, the higher the tongue position is, the higher minimum frequency is.5. From the experiments, we found that Thai students always pronounce r[z] as 1[1].6. We would like to propose some teaching strategies based on the study which is related to a consistent error in pronouncing affricate and fricative among Thai students.