2.2 The Sounds of Language

CHAPTER 2

PHONETICS

Language as the only mean of communication used by human has long been integrated with an audial concept, which is familiarly known as sound. In a concise concept, one ought to be able in producing sound before generating a simple communication by utilizing a particular language. By understanding this theory, the study of human body’s physiology became inseparable part of sound involvement within the domain of linguistic, by which entitled as Phonetics.

There are three types of the study of the sounds of language. Acoustic Phonetics is the study of the physical properties of sounds. Auditory Phonetics is the study of the way listeners perceive sounds. Articulatory Phonetics  is the study of how the vocal tracts produce the sounds. This article will only describe articulatory phonetics.

I take it you already know of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Some may stumble, but not you, on hiccough, thorough, slough, and through?
So now you are ready, perhaps, to learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word, that looks like beard, but sounds like bird.
And dead, it's said like bed, not bead; for goodness' sake, don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat. (They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.)
A moth is not a moth in mother, nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there, nor dear and fear, for bear and pear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose - just look them up - and goose and choose
And cork and work and card and ward and font and front and word and sword
And do and go, then thwart and cart, come, come! I've hardly made a start.
A dreadful language? Why man alive! I've learned to talk it when I was five.
And yet to write it, the more I tried, I hadn't learned it at fifty-five.
- Author Unknown

The orthography (spelling) of words in misleading, especially in English. One sound can be represented by several different combinations of letters. For example, all of the following words contain the same vowel sound: he, believe, Lee, Caesar, key, amoeba, loudly, machine, people, and sea. The following poem illustrates this fact of English humorously (note the pronunciation of the bold words):

The discrepancy between spelling and sounds led to the formation of the International Phonetics Alphabet (IPA.) The symbols used in this alphabet can be used to represent all sounds of all human languages. The following is the American English Phonetic alphabet. You might want to memorize all of these symbols, as most foreign language dictionaries use the IPA.

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
Prior to the slight history mentioned before, an International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) existed as the mean of representing the sounds of spoken language, which was devised around the late of 19th century. IPA covers all manifestations of speech, ranging from phones, phonemes, intonation, as well as words and syllables segmentation. Its elements consisted of letters and diacritics. So far, IPA has developed around 107 letters that symbolize vowel and consonants, 31 diacritics, as well as 19 additional signs, which indicate suprasegmental part (intonation, length, stress, and tone). These
items then displayed into a specific chart, officially made by the organization, which looked like the following picture:





Classification
In aspect of category, the focus of Phonetic itself is divided into three major parts. Those parts are production (articulatory), transmission (acoustic), as well as perception (auditive) of sounds. Yet, before stepping further into the explanation, one ought to bear in mind that there are two kinds of sounds existed as major discussionwithin this study. The first is consonant, while the second is vowel. Another term that we should be aware of, is the category of sounds. There are phones, which is human sounds; phonemes, or units that distinguish meaning in a language; and allophones, or non-distinctive
units. These explanations are the very basic understanding towards phonetic study.

Since the focus of Phonetic discipline mostly lies upon the study of consonant and vowels, phoneticians devised a mean of characterization of consonant through the place arrangement that involves our articulation organs, manner of articulations, as well as its voice (whether the produced sound is voiced or voiceless). While the identification for vowels solely rely on a system of coordinate called as vowel quadrangle. Be sure to check the IPA chart displayed prior to this subchapter, as our reliable reference.




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