An Acoustic Analysis of Hakka Tones of Vietnam’s New Immigrants in Taiwan: A Case Study

• Main Authors: Lo Chih-hsin, 羅枝新
• Other Authors: Cheng Ming-chung
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/883muv

碩士 === 國立聯合大學 === 客家語言與傳播研究所 === 104 === Many Vietnamese leave their own country and cross the ocean to live in Taiwan, new residents. Some marry Taiwanese; others come to this island to work. To adapt daily life, they learn how to speak Hakka. But their Hakka always has a unique accent. Specially the different tones, so it is easy to recognize they are “foreigners.” In everyday life, the wrong tones often result in misunderstanding and conflicts between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law. In Vietnamese societies, those capable of good communication can raise their family rankings. This study focuses on analyzing and discussing the tone errors when Vietnamese immigrants learn Hakka. Through the linguistics experiment mentioned, the data about the language is collected and compared: the new residents’ Hakka, Miaoli Hakka, and new residents’ mother tongue. The data implies what causes the tone errors and what causes the intermediate language to arise. In the experiment, the six tones of single words and Yinping two-word phrases of new residents’ Hakka plus Vietnamese six tones are examined. The results indicate that the new residents speak Qusheng the best. Shangsheng and Yinru are harder to learn because the falling tones could be heard as a rapid high pitch tone which is close to their native language Huyen and Nang. The Qusheng is similar to Bang, so there is few problems when pronounced. Yingping is much the same as Sac; however, according to the experiment, Yingping is similar to the question tones. Yangru tone is too high that might be caused by the tightened guttural sound and the tones of Hoi, Nga, and Sac of their native languages. Checking the graph of new residents’ Hakka, it shows this study is limited due to not having enough samples. If more samples are gathered for further analysis, it can cover more explanations such as errors situations, formation of intermediate language or fixed tones. It is expected that this study will help the Hakka teacher quickly to manage the new residents’ learning the language and develop more efficient teaching strategy.