Phonetics

Phonetics is derived from the Greek work phone which means sound or voice. Phonetics is a fundamental branch of Linguistics which has three different aspects in it:

·         Articulatory phonetics – describes how vowel sounds are articulated in organs of speech.

·         Acoustic phonetics- describes when speech sounds travel through the speaker to the learner; it does in the form of vibration in the air.

·         Auditory phonetics- describes how speech sounds are perceived to the learner.

In a spoken language, sound is produced by passing air over tightened vocal cords through a particularly shaped chamber.

Consonants are defined as speech sounds that are not vowels; a letter of the alphabet that represents a speech sound produced by a partial or complete obstruction of the air stream by a constrction of the speech organs (as taken by the dictionary) while vowels define the shape of the chamber while sound is being created. The actual sound produced such as simple vowel or consonant sound is called ‘phone’. If you can pronounce the sound on its own without moving your tongue, and it doesn’t have a clear start or end, then it’s most likely to be a vowel sound. I have been thinking a lot for the last few weeks about how English might be made phonetic. The first step is identifying vowels that we use in our spoken language, and forget everything we now know about spelling, wherever possible. I believe that it would make sense to use vowels, since they are so widely known and seem to be fairly consistent in most languages: a, e, i, o, u.

In English, or any other language, there are words with sounds different from the way they are actually spelled. This can be a good example of acoustic phonetics. For example, ‘C’ is always either pronounced as /k/ or /s/, except when it’s part of /ch/. So let’s make ‘c’ into /ch/. ‘Q’ is actually /k/ followed by a diphthong (where the tongue doesn't move and only one vowel sound is heard). A lot of vowels in English are actually diphthongs. For example, the word “tour” in American English and British English is pronounced differently. By simply saying that /r/ is /r/ as in tour“, it makes it easier for different language speakers to pronounce each vowel sound differently from one another, and yet have a consistent spelling that all can use. Vowel sounds may be pronounced differently in different countries (and indeed, there is a lot of variation with respect to the letter on this side of the pond) individual American and British speakers pronounce the letters consistently. And thus, we can all use the same letter for it, even if we sound a little different.

If you are interested in this topic, we highly recommend you to join Speakfast course or the Diploma in Practical English and Life Skills in which we conduct a separate course in Voice and Accent Neutralization.