Japanese Verba Analysis on The Use of Duration, Intensity, and Frequency by Indonesian and Malaysia Teachers

Abstract

This research is focused on case studies involving six speakers, native and non-native, in pronouncing Japanese verbs. This research includes an acoustic phonetic study with the help of the PRAAT application which is used to calculate the duration, intensity, and frequency of speech. The subject of discussion in this study were eight Japanese verbs. The research is focused on looking at the similarities and differences of teachers from Indonesia and Malaysia in terms of duration, intensity, and frequency compared with native speech. The research method for obtaining a comparison of the duration, intensity, and frequency of speakers is descriptive-analysis by presenting data in the form of numeric tables and graphs. This study involved two native speakers and six non-native speakers, namely four speakers from Indonesia and two from Malaysia. The data collection method uses PRAAT with audio files as the main data source. The results of this study indicate that the eight target verbs [au], [iku], [isogu], [demasu], [dekakeru], [orinai], [hairimasu], and [norikaemasu] occur variations in terms of duration, intensity, and frequencies spoken by non-natively. For non-native women, the tendency is not too far different from native, both non-native from Indonesia and from Malaysia. However, there was a significant variation for non-native males. Non-native speakers from Malaysia tended to be the same for minimum measures of intensity and frequency, while those from Indonesia tended to be the same for maximum measures of intensity and frequency. For the duration of non-native speakers from Malaysia, the percentage is closer to the native duration. Meanwhile, there were variations in intensity and frequency between non-natives from Indonesia and Malaysia.