Analyzing vowel variation in Korean dialects using phone recognition

Abstract

This study aims to propose an automatic method of detecting vowel variation in the Korean dialects of Gyeong-sang and Jeol-la. The method is based on error patterns extracted using phone recognition. Canonical and recognized phone sequences are compared, and statistical analyses distinguish the vowels appearing in both dialects, the dialect-common vowels, and the vowels with high mismatch rates for each dialect. The dialect-common vowels show monophthongization of diphthongs. The vowels unique to the dialects are /we/ to [e] and /ʌ/ to [ɯ] for Gyeong-sang dialect, and /ɰi/ to [ɯ] in Jeol-la dialect. These results corroborate previous dialectology reports regarding phonetic realization of the Korean dialects. The current method provides a possibility of automatic explanation of the dialect patterns.