Comparative study of vocal parameters of Eunuchs, males and females

Abstract

Oxford dictionary defines Eunuch as a man who has been castrated. This study was taken up to profile the vocal parameters of Eunuchs and to study how they differ from that of males and females. A total of 90 subjects from Mumbai participated in the study. Of these 30 were males, 30 were females and 30 were Eunuchs. All the subjects were in the age range of 18 to 30 years with no history of tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption and no voice & speech problems. Recording of stimuli /a/, /i/,/u/ and conversational speech was done and subjected to acoustic analysis. Results show that 6 out of 7 acoustic parameters (average fundamental frequency, standard deviation of fundamental frequency, jitter %, relative average perturbation, shimmer %, noise to harmonic ratio and voice turbulence index) were distinctly different for Eunuchs as compared to males and females. This suggests that the voice of Eunuchs do not fit in with that of either males or females, they have a distinctly different profile and are a subgroup of their own.