Nasalance in Arabic-Speaking Jordanians: A Comparative Study

Area of Science:

• Speech-language pathology
• Acoustic phonetics
• Cross-linguistic speech analysis

Background:

• Nasalance, a measure of nasal resonance, varies across languages.
• Limited data exists on nasalance in Jordanian Arabic (JA) speakers.
• Understanding cross-linguistic differences in nasalance is crucial for accurate speech assessment.

Purpose of the Study:

• Establish normative nasalance scores for Jordanian Arabic (JA) speakers.
• Develop speech stimuli for nasalance assessment in JA.
• Compare nasalance scores between JA and Standard American English (SAE) speakers.

Main Methods:

• Recruited 100 native JA speakers (adults/children, males/females) and 49 adult SAE speakers.
• Developed four speech tasks (vowels, syllables, words, sentences) for both JA and SAE.
• Utilized a Nasometer II to measure nasalance scores across all participants and tasks.

Main Results:

• Established nasalance values for adult and child JA speakers.
• Observed higher nasalance values in Jordanian adults compared to children.
• Found no significant gender differences in nasalance for nonnasal elements in JA speakers.
• Demonstrated significantly higher nasalance in JA speakers than SAE speakers on specific speech tasks.

Conclusions:

• Normative nasalance values for JA speakers (adults and children) were established.
• Developed and validated Arabic speech materials for nasalance assessment.
• Results highlight significant cross-linguistic variations in nasalance between JA and SAE speakers.