Chapter 3

The Sounds of Language

How can we describe the sounds of language like English?
By producing a separate alphabet with symbols that represent sounds. This set of
symbols is called phonetic alphabet.
Phonetics
Phonetics: The study of the characteristics of speech sounds.
Articulatory Phonetics: The study of how speech sounds are made or articulated.
Acoustic Phonetics: The physical properties of speech as sound waves in the air.
Auditory Phonetics or perceptual phonetics: The study of the perception of
speech sounds by the ear.
Voiced and voiceless sounds
We push the air out by the lungs up through the trachea or windpipe to the larynx.
Inside the larynx are the vocal cords or folds which take two basic positions:
1. Voiceless Sounds 2. Voiced Sounds
1. Voiceless Sounds: sounds that are produced when the vocal cords are spread
apart, the air from the lungs passes between them unimpeded. For example,
/s/ & /f/.
2. Voiced Sounds: sounds that are produced when the vocal cords are drawn
together, the air from the lungs repeatedly pushes them apart as it passes
through creating a vibration effect. For example, /z/ & /v/.
Place of articulation
The place of articulation is the location inside the mouth at which the constriction
takes place.
1. Bilabials: These are sounds formed by using both upper and lower lips.
Such as:
• Pat [p] voiceless
• bat, mat & way [b] , [m] & [w] voiced
 2. Labiodentals:
These are sounds formed with the upper teeth and the lower lip. Such as:
• Fat , safe , cough, photo [f] (voiceless sounds)
• vat, save [v] (voiced sounds)

3. Dentals:
These sounds are formed with the tongue tip behind the upper front teeth
such as:
• Thin, bath , three& teeth. Voiceless sound [Ѳ]usually referred to as
(theta)
• The, there, then, thus, feather & bathe. Voiced sound [ð] usually
called (eth)
Interdental: This term is used for these consonants when they are pronounced
with the tongue tip between the upper and the lower teeth.
4. Alveolars:
These are sounds formed with the front part of the tongue on the
alveolar ridge such as:
• Top, sit , bus voiceless [t] & [s]
• dip, zoo, buzz, raise, knot & nut voiced [d] , [z] & [n]
• Lap, lit, right & write voiced [l] & [r]

5. Palatals or Alveo-palatals
These are sounds produced with the tongue and the palate such as:
• Shout, shoe, brush, church & Child voiceless [ʃ] & [ʧ]
• Treasure , Pleasure & rouge voiced [Ʒ]
• Joke , gem , judge & George voiced [ʤ]
• you & yet voiced [ϳ]
Palate: the hard part in the roof of the mouth behind the alveolar ridge.

6. Velars
These are sounds produced with the back of the tongue against the soft
palate (velum) such as:
• Kid & Kill, Car ,Cold , Cook, Kick & Coke voiceless [k]
• Go, gun, Give, bag, mug & plague. Voiced [g]
• Sing, Sang, Tongue bang, & Ringing . Voiced [ŋ] typically
referred to as “angma.”
 Soft palate or Velum: it is the soft area located back in the roof of the
mouth, beyond the hard palate.

7. Glottals
This sound is produced without the active use of the tongue and other
parts of the mouth such as:
• Have, House, Who & Whose voiceless [h]
Glottis: It is the space between the vocal folds in the larynx.
Manner of articulation
Sounds can be described in terms of how they are articulated but how we can
differentiate between two sounds who are placed in the same place of articulation?
The answer is that the [t] and [s] sounds are both voiceless alveolar sounds but
they differ in their manner of articulation (the way they are pronounced). The
[t] sound is one of a set of sounds called stops while the [t] and [s] sound is one of
a set called fricatives.
1. Stops or plosives
They are sounds which produced by some form of ‘stopping’ of the airstream
very briefly then letting it go suddenly such as [p], [b], [t], [d],[k] & [g]. Such as
the voiceless alveolar stop [t] in ‘ten’ and the voiced stops [b] and [d] in ‘bed’.
2. Fricatives
The manner of articulation used in producing the set of sounds [f], [v], [θ],
[ð], [s], [z], [ʃ], [ʒ]& [h] involves almost blocking the airstream and having the
air push through the very narrow opening.
• The word fish begins and ends with the voiceless fricatives [f] and [ʃ].
• The word those begins and ends with the voiced fricatives [ð] and [z].
• The sound [h], as in Hi or Hello, is voiceless and also usually included in
the set of fricatives.
3. Affricatives
They are sounds produced by combining a brief stopping of the airstream with
an obstructed release which causes some friction. This set of sounds are [ʧ] & [ʤ]
such as the voiceless affricates [ʧ] in ‘cheap’ and the voiced affricates [ʤ] in
‘jeep’.
4. Nasals
They are sounds produced when the velum is lowered and airstream is allowed
to flow out through the nose. Such as the voiced nasals [m ], [ n] & [ŋ ] in
‘morning, knitting & name’.
5. Liquids
The lateral liquid voiced sound [l] is formed by letting the airstream flow
around the sides of the tongue as the tip of the tongue makes contact with the
middle of the alveolar ridge as in ‘led’ while the [r] voiced liquid sound is formed
with the tongue tip raised and curled back near the alveolar ridge as in ‘red’.
6. Glides
These sounds are typically produced with the tongue in motion (or “gliding”)
to or from the position of a vowel and are sometimes called semi-vowels such as
[w] & [ϳ] in ‘wet’ and ‘yes’.
In some approaches, the liquids [l], [r] and glides [w], [j] are combined in one
category called “approximants”.
Glottal stops and flaps
The glottal stop, represented by the symbol [ʔ], occurs when the space
between the vocal folds (the glottis) is closed completely (very briefly), then
released.
For example, we typically produce a glottal stop between the first Oh and the
second oh in Oh oh!. Some people do it in the middle of Uh-uh (meaning “no”),
and others put one in place of “t” when they pronounce Batman quickly. You
can also produce a glottal stop if you try to say the words butter or bottle without
pronouncing the “-tt-” part in the middle. This sound is considered to be
characteristic of Cockney (London) speech. Try saying the name Harry Potter
as if it didn’t have the “H” or the “tt.”. You will also hear glottal stops in the
pronunciation of some Scottish speakers and also New Yorkers.
Flap: This sound is produced by the tongue tip tapping the alveolar ridge briefly.
It is represented by [D] or sometimes [ɾ].
As when you pronounce the word butter in a way that is close to “budder,”.
Many American English speakers have a tendency to “flap” the [t] and [d]
consonants between vowels so that, in casual speech, the pairs latter and ladder
do not have distinct middle consonants. Nor do writer and rider, metal and
medal. They all have flaps.
A thorough description of the physical aspects of speech production will allow
us to characterize the sounds of spoken English, independently of the vagaries
of spelling found in written English.

Vowels
While the consonant sounds are mostly articulated via closure or obstruction
in the vocal tract, vowel sounds are produced with a relatively free flow of air.
They are all voiced.
To describe vowel sounds, we consider the way in which the tongue
influences the shape through which the airflow must pass.
To talk about a place of articulation, we think of the space inside the mouth
as having a front versus a back and a high versus a low area.
➢ Heat, hit high front vowels
➢ Hot Low back vowels
We can find a means of classifying the most common vowel sounds by
following this chart of the major vowels with examples of familiar words
illustrating some of the variation in spelling that is possible for each sound: -
Front vowels Central vowels Back vowels
[i] bead, beef, key, me [ə] above, oven, support [u] boo, move, two, you
[ɪ] bid, myth, women [ʌ] butt, blood, dove, tough [ʊ] book, could, put
[ɛ] bed, dead, said [ɔ] born, caught, fall, raw
[æ] bad, laugh, wrap [ɑ] Bob, cot, swan
Diphthongs
They are the combination of two vowel sounds such as [ai], [au] [ei] [ou] &
[oi]. When we produce diphthong, our vocal organs move from one vocalic
position to another as in:
➢ The movement of the diphthong from low towards high front. As in the
movement of vocalic position [a] to [ɪ] to produce the sound [aɪ] in (Hi or
Bye).
➢ Alternatively, we can use movement from low towards high back, combining
[a] and [ʊ] to produce the sound [aʊ], which is the diphthong repeated in [haʊ
naʊ braʊn kaʊ].
➢ In some descriptions, the movement is interpreted as involving a glide such
as [j] or [w], so that the diphthongs we are representing as [aɪ] and [aʊ] may
sometimes be seen as [aj] or [aw].
[aɪ] buy, eye, I, my, pie, sigh
[aʊ] bough, doubt, cow
[eɪ] bait, eight, great, late, say
[oʊ] boat, home, throw, toe
[ɔɪ] boy, noise