On Speech Audiometry: Spectrographic Studies of Single Sounds and of Test Words

Abstract

Using a sound spectrograph an analysis has been made of the physical characteristics of the Finnish speech test material. It is observed that vowels and vowel-like consonants carry the main part of energy, mostly distributed at the low frequencies, and their duration is relatively long. On the other hand, the plosive consonants, together with v, h and j have low intensity, mainly at high frequencies, and short duration. The relatively small number of the latter sounds, together with the rich vowel content of the Finnish language, renders the articulation scores better than they are in similar hearing losses with American PB material.