LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 16:3 March 2016
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Renuga Devi, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Rate of Speaking and Reading of Adult Nepali Speakers

Bikash Duwal, Bishwajit Karki, Krupa Saira George (MASLP) and
Dr. Sunil Kumar. Ravi, Ph.D. (Speech Language Pathology)

Abstract

Introduction: Rate of speech is one of the important aspects of fluency. Any disruptions in rate of speech will lead to disturbances in speech fluency and it has direct effect on the intelligibility of speech. The rate of speech may depend upon several factors such as coordination between speech subsystems, language competence, and the contextual factors and it can be an index for measuring the speed of articulatory movements during speaking. Although normal rate of speech is reported to be in the range of 80-180 words per minute, the mean values vary from language to language. Nepali, an Indo-Aryan language, is the language spoken widely in Nepal by approximately 17 million people. Although it is one of the important languages of Indo-Aryan family, not many studies are available about the characteristics and features of Nepali language. Hence, the present study was carried out with an aim of understanding the rate of speaking/reading of young Nepali speakers.

Method: 20 young (10 males and 10 females) native Nepali speakers in the age range of 20-30 years were taken for the present study. Rate of speech was measured using job task in which participants were asked to speak about their job for not less than 100 words or for 2 minutes. For measuring rate of reading, participants were asked to read a story passage in Nepali language with 256 words and 688 syllables at their comfortable speed. All the samples were recorded using Audacity software in Lenovo laptop software and the silent pauses with more than 150 ms were removed from the sample. The total duration and total number of words in both job task and reading task were measured. Rate of speech and reading were measured as words per minute (WPM), syllables per minute (SPM), and syllables per second (SS).

Results & Discussion: analysis of speech samples of job task revealed higher rates of speech in males than that of females. Similarly, in rate of reading measures, higher rates were found in males compared to females although statistically not significant. Comparison between the tasks revealed significantly higher rates in job task than reading task.

Conclusion: the present study has established normative data for rate of reading and speaking in Nepali language. The present study also found that rate of speech is faster than that of rate of reading in both males and females in Nepali. The results of the present study can be helpful in diagnosing some of the fluency disorders in Nepali language.

Keywords: Nepali, rate of speech, rate of reading, words per minute, syllables per minute.

Introduction

Fluency is one of the three dimensions of speech, which is defined as “effortless production of long utterances at a rapid rate” (Starkweather, 1981). Any kind of difficulty in parameters of fluency, such as effort, continuity or rate will result in dysfluent speech. The rate of speech is one of the important parameter of fluent speech and is defined as the words or syllables spoken in the given time period which is expressed in term of words or syllables spoken or read per second or minute.

Rate of speech affects both the fluency and intelligibility of an individual’s speech. Rate of speech provides information about the speed of articulatory movements and coordination between articulators during speech production (Gracco & Abbs, 1988). The rate of speech is measured as words per minute (WPM) or syllables per minute (SPM), or syllables per second (SPS) and it varies from task to task, individual to individual and language to language. Although, the three methods, WPM, SPM, and SPS are considered as appropriate measures in measuring rate of speech, syllables per minute (SPM) is considered to provide more reliable information as the speech consists of words with varying number of syllables (Hall, Amir, & Yairi, 1999; Pimsleur, Hancock, & Furey, 1977). The rate of speech can be measured using various tasks, such as spontaneous speech, or narration or picture description. The rate of speech can be measured either through speaking rate (number of syllables divided by the time taken) or articulation rate (number of syllables divided by the time taken without pauses). Articulation rate is considered as more reliable measure as the pauses in continuous speech can vary in duration which may have effect on overall rate of speech. The rate of speech is affected in various speech and language disorders including stuttering, cluttering, hearing impairment, dysarthria and other disorders. However, it is very important to know the normal rate of speech in each language and task to be able to differentially diagnose some of the speech disorders. Causes such as muscle weakness, impaired articulatory coordination, language deficits lead to abnormalities in rate of speech which affects the overall fluency of speech.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Bikash Duwal
4th year BASLP
dwlbks@gmail.com

Bishwajit Karki
4th year BASLP
bkarki_2007@yahoo.com

Krupa Saira George (MASLP)
Assistant Professor in Speech and Hearing
krupasairageorge@gmail.com

Dr. Sunil Kumar. Ravi Ph.D. (Speech Language Pathology)
Corresponding Author
Associate Professor & Principal
rsunilkumar86@gmail.com

Naseema Institute of Speech and Hearing
Bangalore 560095
Karnataka
India

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