Acoustic Variation of (kh) in Fai Mun Village Phuan, Pa Kha Sub-district, Tha Wang Pha District, Nan Province

This paper aims to investigate acoustic variation of (kh) in Fai Mun village Phuan, Pa Kha sub-district, Tha Wang Pha district, Nan province among 3 age groups. The informants are divided into three groups based on their age: the first group is 60 years and above, the second group is between 35-50 years old, and the third group is between 10-25 years old. The acoustic property of the consonant was studied by analyzing relative intensity by means of intensity ratio. The result reveals that (kh) produced by the old age group shows the lowest intensity ratio reflecting a low degree of friction, followed by the middle age group and the young age group with a high degree of friction. However, the intensity ratios of the three groups do not exhibit clear-cut patterns due to the overlapping of the values, suggesting that the speakers from different groups partially use the same variants. In addition, the intra-group variation is found. The old speakers, in particular, show the highest degree of variation, which could result from other social factors apart from the age factor.