Development of the Mandarin speech banana

Area of Science:

• Audiology
• Linguistics
• Speech Science

Background:

• The "speech banana" is a standard tool for evaluating hearing aid and cochlear implant efficacy in Indo-European languages.
• Current practice in China uses non-Mandarin speech bananas, which is inappropriate due to Mandarin's unique logographic and tonal properties.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a standardized Mandarin speech banana tailored to the phonetic characteristics of the Mandarin language.
• To provide a culturally and linguistically appropriate tool for audiological assessments in China.

Main Methods:

• Experiment 1: Measured formants of Mandarin initials and finals read by 14 participants to create a formant graph.
• Experiment 2: Determined minimum bandwidths for recognizing sounds, mapping them onto the formant graph.

Main Results:

• A Mandarin speech banana was successfully generated, displaying recognizable Mandarin initials and finals.
• Phonetic analysis revealed that tonal properties significantly influence the formant graph, particularly at lower frequencies.

Conclusions:

• The developed Mandarin speech banana can be used by clinicians to counsel patients on inaudible speech sounds.
• This tool facilitates the implementation of speech training programs focused on specific, unheard sounds.