Evaluating Nasalance Values Among Bilingual Mandarin-English Speakers

Objective: The goals of this research are (I) to establish normative nasalance values for bilingual Mandarin-English speakers and compare values to those of previously reported monolingual Mandarin speakers, and (2) to examine whether sex, age, dialect, and language proficiency affect levels of nasalance among Mandarin-English speakers in both English and Mandarin. Design: All participants recorded the speech stimuli, constructed to include oral sentences, nasal sentences, oronasal sentences, and vowels /a, i, u/ in Mandarin and English. Nasalance measurements were recorded using the Nasometer II 6450. Participants and Setting: A total of 45 (20 males and 25 females) native Mandarin speakers between 20 and 54 years of age from mainland China participated in the study. Results: Mean nasalance scores of the Mandarin oral sentence (Mean [M] = 17.64, standard deviation [SD] = 7.33), oronasal sentence (M = 54.62, SD = 7.81), and nasal sentence (M = 68.73, SD = 8.09) are reported. Mean nasalance scores of the English oral sentence (M = 20.02, SD = 7.83), oronasal sentence (M = 58.71, SD = 7.59), and nasal sentence (M = 65.27, SD = 7.45) are reported. A repeated measures analysis of variance showed significant sex difference in nasalance scores for English stimuli (P = .031) and Mandarin stimuli (P = .040). There was no significant effects of age, dialect, and language proficiency on Mandarin or English stimuli. Conclusions: This is the first study to report normative values for Mandarin-English speakers using the Nasometer II. Values reported can be used for objective assessment of bilingual speakers.