If you’re just tuning in, you’ll want to read Part 1 before continuing. This next installment gives you an introduction to phonetics, which serves an important role in being able to discuss phonology later on.

Phonetics overview

Wikipedia tells us that “phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies the sounds of human speech.”1 When we’re talking about phonetics, we’re specifically looking at the physical side of human speech sounds. For my part, I am primarily focused on the production of these sounds — so that is what I’ll be explaining in this post.

Any given speech sound you can think of is classified as either a vowel or a consonant.

Vowels are described in terms of three aspects:

  1. Height
  2. Backness
  3. Roundedness

and consonants can be specified in terms of these other three aspects:

  1. Place of articulation
  2. Manner of articulation
  3. Phonation/voicing

I will describe what these aspects entail in more depth below. But first, I need to teach you a little bit about how to write the name of a sound.

How to write sounds

When discussing a single sound, we call it a phone (not to be confused with phoneme, which I will discuss in a later post). Phones are written using the International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA.2 The IPA gives us symbols and accent marks enough to uniquely identify practically any speech sound you can imagine (and plenty which you cannot).

The chart of symbols itself is rather large. You can see the 2015 version here (PDF). I suggest you keep that document open to the side, as I will be referring to aspects of it throughout this post.

Let us take, for example, the phone [k]. The IPA chart tells us that this is a “voiceless velar plosive”. The symbol is written within square brackets because we’re talking about a literal speech sound. (This is in contrast to when we write phonemes, where we have /k/ instead. I’ll explain this difference in a later post.)

Now that you have access to a table of symbols and know what the square brackets mean, I will explain the different aspects of the speech sounds.

Vowels

As mentioned previously, vowels are defined by their height, backness, and roundedness. All vowels are voiced without any particular vocal tract obstructions or constrictions, and in the large majority of cases their manner of phonation is “voiced” so I will not discuss alternatives here. (Voicing is described in greater detail in the below section on consonants.)

Both height and backness refer to the positioning of the tongue in the mouth when producing a given sound, and roundedness describes the shape of the lips when producing the sound.

Take a look at the IPA chart’s section on vowels (on the right-hand side, around the middle of the page). They’re arranged in kind of a funny way, right? In fact, the positions of the vowels on this chart are meant to represent the position of your tongue in your mouth when you make the sound of that vowel. The following two figures illustrate the “height” of the tongue for “front” vowels on the left and “back” vowels on the right:

Front vowels

Back vowels

I will explain these features in more depth shortly, after which these images should make more sense.

In General American English3, we primarily see the following vowels:

IPA Symbol Word IPA Symbol Word
[i] peat [u] food
[ɪ] pit [ʊ] foot
[e] pay [o] go
[ɛ] pet [ʌ] cut
[æ] pat [ɔ] thought
    [ɑ] bra
    [ɒ] pod

I have simplified some of these transcriptions. The fuller transcriptions can be found on the Wikipedia page for writing IPA transcriptions for English.4

Let us look more closely at a few of these sounds. For each vowel, I will provide some example English words to help you identify the sound. Say the example words out loud, and ask yourself the following questions:

  1. Does your tongue feel close to the roof or your mouth, or does it feel low?
  2. Does it feel like the tip of your tongue is closer to your teeth, or is your tongue pressed back towards your throat?
  3. Are your lips making an “O” shape, or are they just sort of open?

It may take some practice to be able to “feel” the position of your tongue in your mouth, but hopefully after a few examples it will become easier for you.

[i]

The first vowel we’ll discuss is [i]. Go ahead and say some [i] words: “heat”, “meat”, “ski”, “me”, “fleece”. These words all use the same vowel.5

Try to pronounce just the vowel by itself and drag it out: “eeeeeeeee”. Try to think about where your tongue is positioned in your mouth. (It may be hard to have total awareness of this at first without more experience, but after a few more examples it’ll make more sense.)

Now try to answer those questions from above. Are you ready for the answers?

This vowel’s height is close or high, its backness is front, and its roundedness is unrounded. The name we give this vowel is “close front unrounded vowel”. (What a name, right?)

[u]

The next vowel is [u]. Your example [u] words are: “boot”, “school”, “food”, “goose”, “dude”.

Again, try to drag out the vowel: “ooooooooooo”. Think again about your tongue’s position in your mouth as you make this sound. Try to answer those three questions again.

The height is close or high, just like [i], but the backness is back and the roundedness is rounded. This vowel is named the “close back rounded vowel”.

[ʌ]

Third, we have [ʌ] (the name of the symbol is often pronounced “wedge”). Some words for this vowel are: “cut”, “strut”, “untidy”, “justice”, “bud”.

To drag it out, say something like “uhhhhhh” (focusing on the vowel part). Once more, try to think about where you think your tongue is in your mouth.

This vowel’s height is open-mid or low-mid, making this a lower vowel than the previous two. The backness is back, so the tongue is approximately as far back in your mouth as for [u]. This vowel is unrounded, like [i]. We call this vowel the “open-mid back unrounded vowel”.

[ɔ]

Our final vowel is [ɔ]. Words for this sound are: “thought”, “dawn”, “fall”, “straw”.

This one is a bit tricky, since we don’t usually consider it as one of the traditional English vowels (“a”, “e”, “i”, “o”, “u”, and their lax/short versions “ah”, “eh”, “ih”, ???, “uh”).

The height of this vowel is open-mid or low-mid, and its backness is back — so far, identical to [ʌ]. However, [ɔ] is rounded. This is the “open-mid back rounded vowel”.

[ɔ] and [ʌ] differ only in their rounding; they are identical otherwise. This is one of the few contrasts in rounding in General American English.

Vowel review

I have given you some concrete examples of vowels and their feature descriptions. Hopefully you now have a better understanding of what “height”, “backness”, and “roundedness” mean when we’re talking about vowels.

To explore the rest of the vowel sounds (including those not present in General American English), check out the Wikipedia article for “Vowel”.

Assuming you are now satisfied with your knowledge of vowels, we’ll move along to the consonants.

Consonants

In contrast to the vowels, consonants are defined primarily by obstructions in the vocal tract. When you utter a consonant, you are usually creating either a complete blockage of airflow or else a constriction to some degree. To discuss consonants, we use entirely different features than we did with the vowels: place of articulation, manner of articulation, and phonation/voicing.

Place of articulation

Let us start with the place of articulation. When you produce a consonantal sound, you use your tongue and mouth to create the sound by blocking airflow somewhere. We identify the following specific places where “articulation” can be said to occur:6

Places of Articulation

For our purposes, we are only concerned with the first 11 places of articulation in the diagram. These are called the “passive” places of articulation (as opposed to the “active” places, which are positions 12-18). These first 11 places are grouped as follows:

Place # Place name
1, 2 Labial
3 Dental
4 Alveolar
5, 6 Palato-alveolar
7 Palatal
8 Velar
9 Uvular
10 Pharyngeal
11 Glottal

You will notice that this list does not perfectly match the IPA chart I gave you earlier. Specifically:

  • The IPA chart splits the labial place into bilabial and labiodental. The former is when both lips are used to produce a sound, and the latter is when the bottom lip and top row of teeth are used to produce a sound. These do not perfectly match with the 1 and 2 markings on the diagram, so I used the common grouping “labial” instead.
  • The IPA chart has “postalveolar”; this is identical to our “palato-alveolar”.
  • The IPA chart includes the place “retroflex”. This place of articulation is somewhat less commonly used, so the above diagram didn’t include it. The retroflex place of articulation occurs approximately between 7 and 8.

Phonation/voicing

Before going to the manner of articulation, let’s spend a moment on phonation (also called “voicing”).

Phonation describes the way in which the vocal chords vibrate while a sound is produced. There are a few different ways to vibrate the vocal chords, but the two ways we are most interested in are: voiced and voiceless.

Voiced sounds are those where the glottis is somewhat constricted, providing maximum turbulence to the vocal chords.

Voiceless sounds occur when the glottis is left completely open, leading to no vibrations in the vocal chords.

To show the difference, here’s a minimal pair: “gate” and “kate”. The “g” in “gate” is the sound [g] — the voiced velar stop. The “k” in “kate” is [k] — the voiceless velar stop. The only difference between these two sounds is that [g] is voiced whereas [k] is voiceless.

This is as detailed as we need to be for phonation. Now on to the last feature of consonants: manner of articulation.

Manner of articulation

Wikipedia gives the following definition for this feature:7

manner of articulation is the configuration and interaction of the articulators (speech organs such as the tongue, lips, and palate) when making a speech sound.

I think this definition does a poor job of explaining manner of articulation, so I will instead write a bit about each of the manners of articulation. They are:

The convention for naming the manners of articulation that I will use is slightly different from what you see on the IPA chart. In truth, they are very similar, but the manners I have are used more often in the literature I’ve read. If you’d like a chart with which to follow along, go to this version on Wikipedia. I will not discuss sibilance in-depth, nor will I go on very much about laterals specifically. I have rearranged the order of the manners to guide the discussion, but the order doesn’t matter overly much.

For each manner of articulation, I will divide the consonants in that group by their places of articulation and their phonation, and then I will give some examples of each where I can.

Note: I am focusing on pulmonic consonants, i.e. those sounds which require air to be pushed out from the lungs. There are other airstream mechanisms, which I will address in the end. I will also exclude sounds which do not occur in English, but you can always investigate the full IPA chart for yourself.

Stops

Stops are found in all spoken natural languages in the world. Arranged by place of articulation, the stops are:

Place of Articulation IPA Symbols
Bilabial [p], [b]
Labiodental [p̪], [b̪]
Dental [t̪], [d̪]
Alveolar [t], [d]
Post-alveolar —
Retroflex [ʈ], [ɖ]
Palatal [c]
Velar [k], [g]
Uvular [q], [ɢ]
Pharyngeal —
Glottal [ʔ]

Note: In this chart (and the others in this article), when you see a pair of phones listed in one cell, the phone on the left is voiceless and the phone on the right is voiced. Where there is only one phone, it is voiceless.

Stops are sounds made by completely stopping the air coming from your lungs with some articulator and then releasing the air at once. The obstruction can be made with your lips, glottis, tongue blade, or tongue tip.8

Let’s start with the voiceless bilabial stop, [p]. This is the initial sound in the words “pin” and “pat”. This stop is bilabial, meaning it is made by stopping airflow with both lips closed, and it is voiceless.

Next, consider the voiceless alveolar stop, [t]. For most General American English speakers, [t] is produced by putting the tip of the tongue at the back of the alveolar ridge. The alveolar ridge is that part of the roof of your mouth between the gums and the soft palate (you can easily feel the ridge with a finger). Some speakers pronounce [t] with their tongue a little closer to their teeth, and some with the tongue further back towards the palate. These are all considered to be essentially the same sound.9 Words beginning with [t] are “top” and “tag”.

Moving farther back in the mouth we come to [k], the voiceless velar stop. This is the sound of the initial consonant in the words “cat” and “kangaroo”. It is produced by occluding airflow near the velum — the very back of the roof of the mouth — by raising the back of the tongue.

[p], [t], and [k] are considered to be the most common sounds among all languages in the world. Very few languages are lacking any of these phones.

[ʔ], the glottal stop, is a peculiar sound because it’s more like a lack of sound than anything else. It’s the sound that occurs between the vowels in “uh-oh”, and it’s the sound that [t] becomes in the Cockney dialect of British English in words like “city” or “butter”. We don’t write this sound explicitly in English, but it’s present in almost every English dialect. It’s produced by completely closing and then releasing the glottis, which is the lowest (or “farthest back”) place of articulation in the human vocal tract.

Fricatives

Place of Articulation IPA Symbols
Bilabial [ɸ], [β]
Labiodental [f], [v]
Dental [θ], [ð]
Alveolar [s], [z]
Post-alveolar [ʃ], [ʒ]
Retroflex [ʂ], [ʐ]
Palatal [ç], [ʝ]
Velar [x], [ɣ]
Uvular [χ], [ʁ]
Pharyngeal [ħ], [ʕ]
Glottal [h], [ɦ]

In this chart, the alveolar, post-alveolar, and retroflex sounds are sibilant fricatives. The rest are non-sibilant. The lateral fricatives have been excluded.

Fricatives are produced by constricting airflow somewhere in the vocal tract and pushing air through that constriction for a period of time.

The voiceless labiodental fricative, [f], is the initial sound in the words “far” and “fricative”, and is the last sound in the word “tough”. This consonant is labiodental, meaning the constriction is produced between the lower lip and upper row of teeth. The voiced labiodental fricative, [v], is the same sound but with voicing, as in the words “voice” and “vector”.

Next, the voiceless dental fricative, [θ], which is the inital sound in the words “theater” and “think” (and also the word “theta”, which is the name of the symbol we use). It’s made by placing the tip of the tongue between the teeth. In English orthography (writing), this sound is written as “th” — but so is the voiced counterpart, [ð], as in words like “their”, “the”, or “other”.

[ʃ], the voiceless post-alveolar fricative, is the initial consonant sound in the words “shoe” and “shell”. The symbol is named “esh”. Its voiced counterpart, [ʒ], is the sound of the “z” in “azure” or the “j” in “Jacques” (when not pronounced like “Jack”).

The voiceless glottal fricative, [h], is actually rather interesting. Many phoneticists disagree about whether it’s truly a fricative. Technically, [h] is made by opening your mouth and pushing air from your lungs without any constrictions in the vocal tract — which means it doesn’t fit into the definition of fricatives that I gave above. It is still regularly placed in the same part of the table as the rest of the fricatives because it essentially sounds like one, but whether it really belongs here is undetermined.

Affricates

Place of Articulation IPA Symbols
Bilabial —
Labiodental —
Dental —
Alveolar [ts], [dz]
Post-alveolar [t̠ʃ], [d̠ʒ]
Retroflex [ʈʂ], [ɖʐ]
Palatal —
Velar —
Uvular —
Pharyngeal —
Glottal —

All shown symbols are sibilant. Lateral affricates have been excluded.

Affricates are essentially the combination of a stop with a fricative. These sounds are not terribly common in English, except for [t̠ʃ] which is the sound we write as “ch” as in “change” and “Chernobyl” (but not “chameleon” which starts with [k]).

Nasals

Place of Articulation IPA Symbols
Bilabial [m]
Labiodental [ɱ]
Dental [n]
Alveolar [n]
Post-alveolar —
Retroflex [ɳ]
Palatal [ɲ]
Velar [ŋ]
Uvular [ɴ]
Pharyngeal —
Glottal —

In this chart, all phones are voiced.

Nasals are sounds which allow air to escape through the nasal cavity (nose) during production. The letters “m” and “n” represent the nasal sounds [m] and [n] respectively, as in “mom”, “mood”, “nanny”, “national”.

The velar nasal, [ŋ], is also used in English. We write it as “ng” and it is only allowed at the ends of syllables, as in “sing”, “morning”, and “hanging” (which has it twice).

Flaps

Place of Articulation IPA Symbols
Bilabial [ⱱ̟]
Labiodental [ⱱ]
Dental —
Alveolar [ɾ̥], [ɾ]
Post-alveolar —
Retroflex [ɽ̊], [ɽ]
Palatal —
Velar —
Uvular [ɢ̆]
Pharyngeal —
Glottal —

Phones appearing on their own in this chart are voiced, and the lateral flaps have been excluded.

Flaps involve momentarily obstructing airflow and then releasing the obstruction. These sounds are relatively uncommon in English, except that we use [ɾ] for sounds like the “tt” in “butter” or the single “t” in “water”. (Unless you pronounce these as [t], but most native English speakers use the tap when speaking quickly.)

Trills

Place of Articulation IPA Symbols
Bilabial [ʙ̥̟], [ʙ]
Labiodental —
Dental —
Alveolar [r̥], [r]
Post-alveolar —
Retroflex [ɽ̊ɽ̊], [ɽɽ]
Palatal —
Velar —
Uvular [ʀ̥], [ʀ̆]
Pharyngeal —
Glottal —

Trills are very similar to the flaps, except that the occlusion is recurring. These sounds do not occur in most English dialects at all.

The alveolar trill [r] is the sound of the “rolled R” or “Spanish R” that is heard at the onsets of Spanish words such as “rojo”. The bilabial trill [ʙ] is the sound that babies make with their lips that sounds sort of like an engine or propeller.

Approximants

Place of Articulation IPA Symbols
Bilabial —
Labiodental [ʋ̥], [ʋ]
Dental —
Alveolar [ɹ̥], [ɹ]
Post-alveolar —
Retroflex [ɻ̊], [ɻ]
Palatal [j̊], [j]
Velar [ɰ̊], [ɰ]
Uvular —
Pharyngeal —
Glottal —

Approximants are a bit tough to explain, so I’ll let Wikipedia do the talking10:

Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no turbulence.

We only use one non-lateral approximant in English: [ɹ], the voiced alveolar approximant, which makes the sound of “r” in words like “red” and “bard”.

Lateral Approximants

Place of Articulation IPA Symbols
Bilabial —
Labiodental —
Dental —
Alveolar [l]
Post-alveolar —
Retroflex [ɭ]
Palatal [ʎ]
Velar [ʟ]
Uvular —
Pharyngeal —
Glottal —

There is a special class of approximants called the lateral approximants. Essentially, lateral sounds are sounds where you push air around the sides of your tongue instead of over the top of it. We have only one lateral consonant in standard English: [l], the alveolar lateral. This is the sound of “l” in words like “lake”, “lava”, and “land”.

You may have noticed that all of the example words for [l] had “l” at the beginning of the word. What about a word like “all”? In fact, this is a slightly different sound: [ɫ], the velarized alveolar lateral approximant (also called the “dark L”). This is a phone with what is called a secondary articulation. These won’t come up too often in our discussions, so we won’t go any further than that.

Airstream mechanisms

The airstream mechanism describes how air is moved about in the vocal tract to produce sound. For all of the above discussion, I only discussed phones that are made through a pulmonic airstream mechanism, but there are three other mechanisms. Altogether, they are:

  • pulmonic: air is pushed out of the lungs and up the airway, leaving through the mouth or nose
  • glottalic egressive: also called “ejective”, this involves compressing the air column by moving the glottis upwards
  • glottalic ingressive: also called “implosive”, this process is the opposite of glottalic egressive in that you are instead expanding the air column; note that air may still flow outward, despite the name
  • lingual ingressive: commonly called “clicks”, these sounds are made by allowing air to rarefy in the mouth by moving the tongue downwards

Wikipedia claims11 that all languages use pulmonics for at least some sounds (such as vowels), and that nearly three-fourths of human languages use pulmonics exclusively. 16% of the world’s languages use glottalic egressives, 13% use glottallic ingressives, and fewer than 2% of languages use lingual ingressives (all of which are in Africa).

Summary

We have now covered all of the major components of what goes into making sounds, and the terminology used to describe them. This is not all of the terminology, however, but it is most of what we care about when discussing the various features of phones. I will address the remaining phonetic features in the next post, and afterwards we will continue into phonology.

Footnotes

  1. “Phonetics” on Wikipedia ↩

  2. “International Phonetic Alphabet” on Wikipedia ↩

  3. “General American” on Wikipedia ↩

  4. “Help:IPA/English” on Wikipedia ↩

  5. In a more specific sense, some of the words may use ever-so-slightly altered versions of the vowel. For our purposes, though, we will consider them to be equivalent. ↩

  6. Image and labels from “Place of articulation” on Wikipedia ↩

  7. “Manner of articulation” on Wikipedia ↩

  8. “Stop consonant” on Wikipedia ↩

  9. “Voiceless dental and alveolar stops” on Wikipedia ↩

  10. “Approximant consonant” on Wikipedia ↩

  11. “Airflow mechanism” on Wikipedia ↩