RESUMO
Introduction: Speech production is the most unique task performed by a human. The speech signals consist of strings of vowels and consonants. Vowels are differentiated based on acoustic characteristics. Methodology: A total of 50 Nepali students, 25 males and 25 females of the age range 18 to 25 years with no history of voice disorders, flu, neurological disorders, speech, language impairment, and respiratory dysfunction were included in the study. Sustained phonation of five short vowels /a/, /i/, /o/, /u/ and /e/ were used in order to measure the acoustic variables. PRAAT software was used to extract the acoustic parameter of voice; mean pitch, Jitter, RAP, PPQ 5, Shimmer, and APQ 11. Result: Mean and SD was calculated using SPSS. Mann-Whitney test revealed there was a highly significant difference in all the parameters taken for the study among males and females. However, the females had greater F0, jitter, RAP, PPQ5, shimmer, APQ11 than the males. Conclusion: Before implementing these norms in clinical set up we must consider that these values are developed for the adults whose L1 is Nepali language and the software used for the establishment of norms was Praat.