An Acoustic Analysis Of The Phonemic Shift Of The Voiceless Velar Fricative /X= خ/ Toward Aspirated Velar Stops /Kh=

Abstract

Languages of the world have different ranges of alphabets and their phonemic sounds. The Urdu language is considered phonologically very near to the Hindi language but despite this due to differences in the total number of alphabets and phoneme sounds some of the sounds of Urdu are not parts of the Hindi language and vice versa. One of them is the/x/ sound, which is not part of the Hindi sound inventory, due to the absence of the/x/ voiceless velar fricative sound Hindustani people use voiceless velar aspirated sound /kh/, in Urdu /Kh/ too presented as a voiceless velar aspirated sound and is used with different perspective and angle. It means in Urdu both sounds /x/ and /kh/ are part of the inventory while /x/ is missing in Hindi language. Both in Hindi and Urdu 15/15 as[1]pirated consonant stops are present. This paper intended to determine the impact of media on the phonological patterns of Pakistani students exposed to Indian Media. A comparative analysis has been done. For this purpose, four students, who were not exposed to Indian Media, government school students, were taken as participants and four selected students of Beacon House o-level were exposed to Indian media. Sound patterns have been analyzed using Paraat Software, which shows the stationary movement of the energy flow. Frequencies have been sorted out. Krashen’s input and Swain’s output hypothesis model have been utilized as theoretical perspectives. Students who were exposed to Indian Media, o-level students, become habitual to comprehensible input of Indian inventory so they started to speak the/kh/ sound even at the place of the/x/ sound while students of Government school use the plain /x/ sound as per Urdu rules because their comprehensible input in schools was plain /x/, and they use /kh/ at their proper places while o-level students do not have any idea of /x/ sound.