The Impact of Tone Language and Non-Native Language Listening on Measuring Speech Quality

Models that represent objective speech quality should include the influence of the cultural background of the listener as well as the particular language being spoken. Tests that evaluated American English and Igbo, an African tone language, revealed significant differences. Igbo listeners were more disturbed by additive noise and low listening levels. The low-level parts of the Igbo tone language appear to contain more critically important information than American English. Quality speech models must therefore be tuned to match the culture and language.