Voice quality : a preliminary study on the phonetic distinctions of two cantonese accents

Hong Kong Cantonese and Guangzhou Cantonese are two fully mutually intelligible Chinese dialects that share almost the same phonological system. However, native speakers have no difficulty in distinguishing these two accents. The baffling question of what phonetic features account for the identification of these two Cantonese variants has perplexed many minds but remains unsolved. This study is a very preliminary foray aiming at solving this puzzle from a less studied linguistic domain, voice quality. Results of acoustic analyses reveal that there are significant differences in pitch and phonation of these two accents.