The Development of Ilocano Word Lists for Speech Audiometry

Abstract

Objective: The goal of this work is the creation of word lists, in Ilocano, suitable for use in speech audiometry.

Methods: First, estimates of the distribution of speech sounds and of the most common syllable structures in Ilocano were found from a phonetic transcription analysis of nearly 3000 words obtained from three magazine articles. Second, 372 two-syllable words were rated, for commonness, by fifteen native speakers of Ilocano who currently reside in Hawai’i. Finally, various combinations of two-syllable words were made to produce 50-item lists.

Results: First, an estimate of the distribution of speech sounds in Ilocano was found, with frequencies of occurrence ranging from 22.4%, for the speech sound /a/, to 0.007%, for the speech sound /v/. The syllable-structure analyses revealed that a very small number of distinct monosyllabic words were used very frequently. Two-syllable words were also used frequently, but were attributed to many distinct words. Second, from the rating results, approximately 70% of the two-syllable words in the rating survey were judged as common by 12 or more of the raters.

Finally, four lists of 50 words each were constructed using only common two-syllable words with the most frequent two-syllable structures found in Ilocano. Each word list has a distribution of speech sounds that approximates that found from the phonetic analysis, and hence each list is roughly phonetically-balanced.

Conclusions: These word lists may be of value to otolaryngologists and audiologists who work with native speakers of Ilocano.

Keywords: Ilocano, Ilokano, phonetically-balanced, speech audiometry, word lists