Hausa vowels and dipthongs

Abstract

Acoustic properties of Hausa vowels and diphthongs from several speakers are investigated. The results show that Hausa is best described as having a five vowel system, where the five basic vowels have the qualities of the long vowels. Long vowels are derived as double basic vowels. The qualities of the short vowels are significantly different from those of the long vowels, but these quality differences can be accounted for by an undershoot mechanism in the speech production. The diphthong /au/ is modeled, using the formant frequencies of /a/ and /u/ with an interpolation in accordance with a trinomial equation. The diphthong /ai/ is mostly realized as a long [e:] phonetically.