An acoustic analysis of voice quality in London English: The effect of gender, ethnicity and f0

This study investigates voice quality in London English, using acoustic features such as harmonic structure (H1-H2) and fundamental frequency (f0). We compare the speech of 28 Inner London Hackney speakers of Anglo and non-Anglo background with the speech of 14 Outer London Anglo speakers from Havering. The results reveal that voice quality and pitch significantly differ between the two locations, where Inner London speech is lower in pitch, yet more breathy in voice quality. This suggests that the H1-H2 measure is not necessarily dependent on global f0 values.