 When you know a language you know the sounds of that language, and you know how to

combine those sounds into words.

 When you know English you know the sounds represented by the letters b, s, and u, and you

are able to combine them to form the words bus and sub.

 Part of knowing a language means knowing what sounds (or signs1) are in that language

and what sounds are not. One way this unconscious knowledge is revealed is by the way
speakers of one language pronounce words from another language.
 French people speaking English often pronounce words like this and that as if they were spelled

zis and zat. The English sound represented by the initial letters th in these words is not part of the
French sound system, and the mispronunciation reveals the French speaker’s unconscious
knowledge of this fact.
 Knowing the sound system of a language includes more than knowing the inventory of sounds.
 It means also knowing which sounds may start a word, end a word, and follow each other.

 The name of a former president of Ghana was Nkrumah, pronounced with an initial sound like
the sound ending the English word sink. While this is an English sound, no word in English
begins with the nk sound.

 Speakers of English who have occasion to pronounce this name often mispronounce it (by
Ghanaian standards) by inserting a short vowel sound, like Nekrumah or Enkrumah, making
the word correspond to the English system.

 Children develop the sound patterns of their language very rapidly.

 A one-year-old learning English knows that nk cannot begin a word, just as a Ghanaian child of the
same age knows that it can in his language.
 Knowledge of a language enables you to combine sounds to form words, words to form phrases, and phrases

to form sentences.
 You cannot buy a dictionary or phrase book of any language with all the sentences of the language. No dictionary can

list all the possible sentences, because the number of sentences in a language is infinite.

 Knowing a language means being able to produce and understand new sentences never spoken before.

 This is the creative aspect of language. Not every speaker can create great literature, but everybody who knows a

language can create and understand new sentences.

Hierarchies of Structure of Language
Levels of Structure Subject
1. Discourse Pragmatics
2. Sentence Semantics
3. Phrase, Clauses Syntax
4. Words Morphology
5. Syllables Phonology
6. Sounds Phonetics
 One Sound is actually not one sound is bundle of 15 or 16 features at least put together you can
think of.

Structure of Language

1. Sentence + Sentence Discourse Pragmatics

2. Phrase + Phrase Sentence Semantics
3. Word + Word Phrase, Clause Syntax
4. Syllable + Syllable Word Morphology
5. Sound + Sound Syllable Phonology
6. Phonetic Unit + Phonetic Unit Sound Phonetics
  Speech sound: not noise, clapping, snapping fingers

 What is speech sound?

 Phone+tics is the branch of linguistics that is concerned with the scientific study of speech sounds. (Greek

word)

 The study of phonetics can provide answers to many questions that you might have wondered about at one

time or another.

 For example, what does it mean to say that someone has a higher-pitched voice than someone else?

 What makes a tone language like Mandarin Chinese different from a non-tonal language such as English

or Spanish?

 Da jia hao, Wo jiao Rajesh, Ni ke yi jiao raj, wo ai nimen..

 How do English pairs of words such as the verb import and the noun import differ?
 Several areas of phonetics have been the focus of research into the features of speech.

 Phonetics is the study of the sounds made in the production of human speech.

 It has three principal branches.(three ways of study)

 Articulatory phonetics (Production)

 is concerned with how the vocal organs produce speech.

 Articulatory phonetics focuses on the human vocal apparatus and describes sounds in terms of their articulation in

the vocal tract; it has been central to the discipline of linguistics.

 Acoustic phonetics (Transmission)

 deals with the physical characteristics of speech, such as the duration, frequency, and intensity of sounds.

 Acoustic phonetics uses the tools of physics to study the nature of sound waves produced in human speech.

 Acoustic phonetics is increasingly important in developing machines and computer software for speech

recognition, as well as in voice identification and voice-initiated mechanical operations.

 Auditory phonetics (Reception)

 examines the perception of speech by the auditory system.

 Acoustic, articulatory, and auditory phonetics are all interrelated, since changing the articulatory

configuration of the vocal tract results in acoustic changes which in turn potentially influence the

perception of a sound.

 Our discussion in this chapter will be limited almost exclusively to articulatory phonetics—the

nature of human sounds as they are produced by the vocal apparatus.

 What is primary or fundamental requirement of speech.

 Can dead people can speak? Why?

 Airstream:

 Pulmonic Egressive Airstream Mechanism: 99% of speech produced by outgoing.

 Pulmonic Ingressive Airstream Mechanism: 1% of speech sound produced by incoming.

Eg: Sindhi language.

 A large variety of speech sounds are made by human beings

 Animal beings only can produce FOUR sounds: HISS/ BUZZES/ BANGS/ GLIDES

 What special feature human being has?

 The Vocal Tract
 The processes used by the vocal tract in creating a multitude of sounds are akin to those of wind

instruments and organ pipes, which produce different musical sounds by varying the shape, size,
and acoustic character of the cavities through which air passes once it leaves its source.
 Every speech sound you make differs from every other one because of a unique combination of

features in the way you shape your mouth and tongue and move them and other parts of the vocal
apparatus while making it.
 We will look at the parts of the vocal tract and learn how they work together to produce sounds.
 How are speech sounds made?
 First, air coming from the lungs passes through the vocal tract, which shapes it into different
speech sounds.
 The air then exits the vocal tract through the mouth or nose or both.
 The vocal tract is comprised of all the parts of the body that are used in the creation of

speech sounds, from the abdominal muscles that contract to push air out of the lungs,
to the lips and nostrils from which the sound emerges.
 We sometimes call this collection of parts “the organs of speech,” but there really is no

such thing.
 Every body part that is used for speech has some other biological function – the lungs

for breathing, the tongue and teeth for eating, the larynx to close off the lungs and keep
the two systems separate – and is only secondarily adapted for speech.
 Basically, sound is vibrating air. Speaking means using your vocal tract (lungs, trachea,

larynx, mouth, and nose) to get air moving and vibrating, and then shaping that
movement in different ways.
 Most speech sounds are made with air exiting
the lungs; therefore, speech begins with breath.

 To begin to speak, you pull down your

diaphragm, the big muscle that separates your
chest cavity from your stomach.

 This enlarges the lungs, which draws air in.

 Then the diaphragm relaxes and the muscles

around the ribs contract, slowly squeezing
the lungs and forcing the air out and up the
windpipe, or trachea.
 • Structure and Function of Vocal Cords
• At the top of the trachea is a little box of cartilage, called the larynx (the “Adam’s apple”).
• Inside the larynx, two folds of soft tissue, called the vocal folds (sometimes called “vocal cords”),
lie across the top of the trachea.
• Phonetor (Vocal folds) Razometer
• If the vocal folds are held in the correct position with the correct tension, the air flowing out of the
trachea causes them to flap open and closed very quickly (around 200 times per second). You can
feel this opening and closing motion as vibration in your throat. 14.000/sec speed when it vibrates
• Arytenoid Cartilage : Uniqueness of voice depends on
Length of AC, Men/21 mm,
Women 18 mm, Child below 18
• Vocal cords help
to speak/eat/breath
• Find your larynx (you should be able to feel the bump of the Adam’s apple at the front of your
throat), and then hum a tune.
• Muscles attached to the cartilages of the larynx allow you to adjust the tension of the folds,
thus adjusting the rate of vibration and raising or lowering the pitch.
• The faster the vibration, the higher the pitch of the voice.
• Other muscles also allow you to draw the folds apart so that no vibration occurs.
• States of Vocal cords
• Fully Closed: No speech sounds
• Partly Closed: Vibrated/Voiced speech sounds
• Fully Open: Voiceless speech sounds
(Whisper: ssss, house, son, shine (shhh)
 FUNCTIONS OF VOCAL CORDS
 Vocal cords make speech audible

 Vocal cords produce Tone of voice

 Tone: Rate of Change in Vibration of the Vocal Cord

 Rising Tone: Requests, Questions (Can I borrow your pen)

 Falling Tone: Statements, Commands

 Rising and Falling: Expressing Doubts

 Falling and Raising: Seeking clarification

• Inside the mouth itself, there are many different structures –
active articulators and passive articulators – that we use to
shape speech sounds as the air passes through the vocal tract.

• The active articulators move toward the passive articulators

in order to constrict and shape the air that is moving out from
the lungs.
Active articulators
• Include the lips, which can be opened or closed, pursed or
spread, and the tongue.
• What we usually see of the tongue is the small, pink tip, but it is
actually a large mass of interconnected muscles that fills the
floor of the mouth.
• Although the tongue has no bones or cartilage, different parts of the
tongue can move fairly independently.
• The tongue front (including the tongue tip and the tongue blade, which
extends a few centimeters back from the tip),
• the tongue body (the main mass of the tongue, also known as the
dorsum), and
• the tongue root (the lowest part of the tongue, back in the pharynx), are
considered separate active articulators.
• The passive articulators lie along the top of the vocal tract.
Run your tongue along the top of your mouth beginning behind
your upper teeth.
• You will first encounter the alveolar ridge, the bony rise just
behind your teeth.
• The postalveolar region arches from the alveolar ridge toward
the hard palate, the roof of the mouth.
• If you curl your tongue very far back in your mouth, you can
feel that the bony structure of the hard palate gives way to
softer tissue, which is known as the soft palate, or velum.
 The velum is a muscular structure that regulates the velar port, the opening in the back of

the mouth that connects the mouth and nose.

 When the velum is lowered, as it is for breathing and for some sounds such as [m] and

[n], the port is open and air flows freely between the nose and lungs.

 When the velum is raised, as it is for most speech sounds, the opening to the nose is

closed off and all the airstream is directed through the mouth.

 At the very end of the velum is the uvula, the little pink pendulum you can see hanging

down in the back of your mouth when you open wide and say “ah.”
/frɪdʒ/
/ˈtiː.tʃər/
/ˈwenz.deɪ/
/ˈθʌr.ə/
/ˈkɒn.ʃəs.nəs/
/ʃæmˈpeɪn/
 /frɪdʒ/ Fridge
/ˈtiː.tʃər/ Teacher
/ˈwenz.deɪ/ Wednesday
/ˈθʌr.ə/ Thorough
/ˈkɒn.ʃəs.nəs/ Consciousness
/ʃæmˈpeɪn/ Champagne

• Hellacious
• Colonel
• Isthmus
• Anemone
• Choir
 INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET (IPA)
 In this lesson, you can learn about using IPA. You’ll see how using IPA can improve your English

pronunciation and help you to avoid pronunciation mistakes.

 IPA stands for ‘international phonetic alphabet’. It allows English to be read and written

phonetically, so one symbol = one sound.

 Maybe you know something about IPA already. Why do you need IPA?

 Orthography, a general term for “spelling” in any language, does not necessarily represent the

sounds of a language in a consistent way.

 To be scientific—and phonetics is a science—we must devise a way for the same sound to be

spelled with the same letter every time, and for any letter to stand for the same sound every time.
 English spelling and pronunciation are horribly irregular. Take these words as examples:

thorough,Wednesday, consciousness, or champagne.

 There’s not much relation between what you write and what you say. That makes things
difficult.
 To make it clear why this is, let’s do a different test.
 I’m going to show you some colours. Say the colour of the square out loud as you see it.

Green Pink Orange

 Did you say ‘red’, ‘blue’, ‘yellow’?

 Did the words in a different colour slow you down?

 Maybe that was easy, maybe not. Either way, your brain has to work harder, because in
this test, you have to read a word, and then ignore it and say something different.

 That’s what reading English is like.You have to see one thing, and say something else.

 We will see other examples:

 To see that ordinary spelling with our Roman alphabet is woefully inadequate for the
task, consider sentences such as:
o Did he believe that Caesar could see the people seize the seas?

o The silly amoeba stole the key to the machine.

 The same sound is represented variously by e, ie, ae, ee, eo, ei, ea, y, oe, ey, and i.
o On the other hand, consider

o My father wanted many a village dame badly.

 Here the letter a represents the various sounds in father, wanted, many, and so on.
o Making the spelling waters yet muddier, we find that a combination of letters may
represent a single sound
o shoot character Thomas physics
o either deal rough nation
o coat glacial theater plain

 Or, conversely, the single letter x, when not pronounced as z, usually stands for the two
sounds ks as in sex (you may have to speak aloud to hear that sex is pronounced seks).
 Some letters have no sound in certain words (so-called silent letters):

o mnemonic autumn asthma corps

o honest chthonic hole Christmas

o psychology sword debt gnaw

o bough phthalate island knot

 Or, conversely, there may be no letter to represent sounds that occur. In many words,
the letter u represents a y sound followed by a u sound:
o cute (sounds like kyute; compare: coot)

o fume (sounds like fyume; compare: fool)

o use (sounds like yuse; compare: umlaut)

 Throughout several centuries English scholars have advocated spelling reform.
 Nonetheless, spelling reformers failed to change our spelling habits, and it took phoneticians to invent
an alphabet that absolutely guaranteed a one-sound-to-one-symbol correspondence.
 There could be no other way to study the sounds of all human languages scientifically.
 In 1888 members of the International Phonetic Association developed a phonetic alphabet to
symbolize the sounds of all languages.

 They utilized both ordinary letters and invented symbols.

 Each character of the alphabet had exactly one value across all of the world’s languages.

 Someone who knew this alphabet would know how to pronounce a word written in it, and upon hearing a word
pronounced, would know how to write it using the alphabetic symbols.

 The inventors of this International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA, knew that a phonetic alphabet should include just
enough symbols to represent the fundamental sounds of all languages.
 Often, your instinct is to read the letters you see phonetically. This is tiring to fight against,
and it leads to pronunciation mistakes, which can easily become bad habits over time.
 Using IPA when you study vocabulary solves this problem for you.
 With IPA, you don’t have to see one thing and say another. IPA is one hundred per cent
phonetic.
 That means the pronunciation and the ‘spelling’ match exactly, every time.
 If you’ve never used IPA before, it might look complicated. It’s not. You can learn to use
IPA from zero with one or two hours of practice.
 In the rest of this lesson, you’ll get a basic introduction to reading and writing in IPA, and
you’ll see how you can use it to make your English learning easier and more effective.
 One note before we continue: we’re using IPA based on southern British English

pronunciation. Other varieties of English, like US English, are written slightly differently

in IPA.

 However, the differences are not large. So now, let’s look at how to read IPA.

 First, some good news! Many IPA symbols are easy, because they look like regular

letters, and have the same pronunciation.

 This is true for many consonant sounds, like /b/, /m/ or /l/.

 Remember that in IPA, the same sound is always written the same way. In English, a /k/

sound can be written with the letters ‘k’ ‘c’, or maybe ‘q’, but in IPA, you always write it

with ‘k’.
 CLASSIFICATIN OF SPEECH SOUNDS
“I gradually came to see that Phonetics had an important bearing on human relations—that
when people of different nations pronounce each other’s languages really well (even if
vocabulary & grammar not perfect), it has an astonishing effect of bringing them together, it
puts people on terms of equality, a good understanding between them immediately springs
up.” - FROM THE JOURNAL OF DANIEL JONES.
 The sounds of all languages fall into two classes: Consonants and Vowels.

 In phonetics, the terms consonant and vowel refer to types of sounds, not to the letters that

represent them.

 In speaking of the alphabet, we may call a a vowel and c a consonant, but that means only
that we use the letter a to represent vowel sounds and the letter c to represent consonant
sounds.
 Vowels are harder to describe than consonants.

 By definition, vowels have an open vocal tract, so the tongue doesn’t actually touch the
upper surface of the vocal tract at any particular place and the term place of articulation
isn’t really appropriate.
 Consonants are produced with some restriction or closure in the vocal tract that
impedes the flow of air from the lungs.
 Instead, different vowels are described in terms of the ways in which the tongue body and
lips move.
 Linguists classify vowels by the height of the tongue body, whether it is bunched toward the
front or back of the mouth, and whether the lips are rounded.
 Definition of vowels:
 Voiced: a, e, i, o, u (vibrate)
 Oral: air coming through mouth
 Unobstructed/Free
 If describing vowel systems in general is a difficult task, describing the vowels of

English is even more so.

 One reason is because there are a lot of them.

 The most common number of vowels for a language to have is five.

 Though English writers use just five letters to encode their vowels (relics of an older

system), the English language uses more than a dozen different vowel sounds.
 Another reason is because the exact number of vowels and exact vowel quality differ

from dialect to dialect, much more so than for the consonants.

 For example, the word mate as pronounced by a speaker from Perth sounds a lot (though not

exactly) like the word might as pronounced by a speaker from Baltimore.

 The word my spoken by a native of Atlanta sounds similar to mar as pronounced in Boston, and

ma as pronounced in Seattle.
 For most speakers on the East coast of the United States, the words caught and cot have two

different vowel sounds; but for most speakers on the West coast, the two words are
pronounced the same.
 Vowel sounds carry pitch and loudness; you can sing vowels or shout vowels.

 They may be longer or shorter in duration.

 Vowels can stand alone—they can be produced without consonants before or after them.

 You can say the vowels of beat [bit], bit [bɪt], and boot [but], for example, without the initial [b] or

the final [t], but you cannot say a [b] or a [t] alone without at least a little bit of vowel sound.

 Linguists can describe vowels acoustically or electronically. In this chapter we describe

vowels by their articulatory features.

 Classification of vowels sounds

 We classify vowels according to three questions:

 How high or low in the mouth is the tongue?

 How forward or backward in the mouth is the tongue?

 Are the lips rounded (pursed) or spread?

 TONGUE POSITION
 The first two diagrams in Figure show that the tongue is high in the mouth in the production of
the vowels [i] and [u] in the words he [hi] and who [hu].

 In he the front part (but not the tip) of the tongue is raised; in who it is the back of the tongue.
(Prolong the vowels of these words and try to feel the raised part of your tongue.)

 These are both high vowels, and the [i] is a high front vowel while the [u] is a high back vowel.
 To produce the vowel sound [a] of hah [ha], the tongue is low in the mouth, as the third diagram in
Figure shows. (The reason a doctor examining your throat may ask you to say ah is that the tongue is low
and easy to see over.)
 The vowels [ɪ] and [ʊ] in the words hit [hɪt] and put [phʊt] are similar to those in heat [hit] and hoot [hut] with
slightly lowered tongue positions.

 The vowels [e] and [o] in bait [bet] and boat [bot] are mid vowels—they are neither high nor low. [ɛ] in
bet [bɛt] is also a mid-vowel, produced with a slightly lower tongue position than [e]. As well, [e] and [ɛ]
are front vowels and [o] is a back vowel.

 The vowel [æ] in hack [hæk] or cat [kæt] is produced with the front part of the tongue low in the mouth.
Thus [æ] is a low front vowel. The [ɔ] in saw [sɔ] is also a low vowel, but it is pronounced by lowering the
back of the tongue. It is therefore a low back vowel.
 The vowel [ʌ] in the word luck [lʌk] is a central vowel pronounced with the tongue low in the mouth
though not as low as with [a].
 Finally the schwa [ə], which occurs as the first sound in about [əbaʊt], or the final sound of sofa [sofə], is articulated
with the tongue in a neutral position between the extremes of high/low, front/back. The schwa is used mostly to
represent unstressed vowels.
 LIP ROUNDING
 Vowels also differ as to whether the lips are rounded or spread.

 The back vowels [u], [ʊ], [o], and [ɔ] in boot, put, boat, and bawd are the only rounded vowels.

 They are produced with pursed or rounded lips.

 You can get a feel for the rounding by prolonging the word who, as if you were an owl: whoooooooooo.

 Now pose for the camera and say cheese, only say it with a prolonged vowel: cheeeeeeeeeeese. The high front [i] in

cheese is unrounded, with the lips in the shape of a smile, and you can feel it or see it in a mirror.

 Other languages may differ in whether or not they have rounded vowels. French and Swedish, for

example, have front rounded vowels, which English lacks.

 English also lacks a high back unrounded vowel, but this sound occurs in Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and the

Cameroonian language FeɁfeɁ, among others. The IPA symbol for this vowel is [ɯ].

 The rounding distinction is important, as in Mandarin Chinese the unrounded [sɯ] means ‘four’ but the round [su]

(like sue) means ‘speed.’

 Diphthongs

 A diphthong is a sequence of two vowel sounds “squashed” together. Diphthongs are present in
the phonetic inventory of many languages, including English.

 The vowels we have studied so far are simple vowels, called monophthongs.

 The vowel sound in the word bite [baɪt], however, is the [a] vowel sound of father followed
rapidly by the [ɪ] sound of fit, resulting in the diphthong [aɪ].

 Similarly, the vowel in bout [baʊt] is [a] followed by the [ʊ] sound of put, resulting in [aʊ].
Another diphthong that occurs in English is the vowel sound in boy [bɔɪ], which is the vowel [ɔ]
of bore followed by [ɪ], resulting in [ɔɪ].

 The pronunciation of any of these diphthongs may vary from our description because of the
diversity of English speakers.
 CONSONANTS

 From an articulatory point of view, consonants and vowels are both made by positioning the
vocal tract in a particular configuration.

 However, consonants are distinguished from vowels

 in that consonants are produced with a constriction somewhere in the vocal tract that impedes
(block) airflow,

 while vowels have at most only a slight narrowing and allow air to flow freely through the oral cavity.

 When describing a consonant, it is therefore necessary to provide information about three

different aspects of its articulation:
 Is the sound voiced or voiceless?

 Where is the airstream constricted (i.e., what is the place of articulation)?

 How is the airstream constricted (i.e., what is the manner of articulation)?

 VOICED AND VOICELESS SOUNDS

 Sounds are voiceless when the vocal cords are apart so that air flows freely through the glottis
into the oral cavity.
 [p] and [s] in super [supər] are two of the several voiceless sounds of English.

 If the vocal cords are together, the airstream forces its way through and causes them to vibrate.
Such sounds are voiced.
 [b] and [z] in buzz [bʌz] are two of the many voiced sounds of English.

 To get a sense of voicing, try putting a finger in each ear and say the voiced “z-z-z-z-z.” You can feel the
vibrations of the vocal cords.

 If you now say the voiceless “s-s-s-s-s,” you will not sense these vibrations (although you might hear a
hissing sound).

 When you whisper, you are making all the speech sounds voiceless. Try it! Whisper “Sue” and “zoo.” No
difference, right?
 The voiced/voiceless distinction is very important in English. This phonetic property
distinguishes the words in pairs like the following:

 The first word of each pair ends with a voiceless sound and the second word with a
voiced sound. All other aspects of the sounds in each word pair are identical; the position
of the lips and tongue is the same.
 rope/robe fate/fade rack/rag wreath/wreathe

[rop]/[rob] [fet]/[fed] [ræk]/[ræg] [riθ]/[rið]

 The voiced/voiceless distinction also occurs in the following pairs, where in each case
the first word begins with a voiceless sound and the second with a voiced sound:
 fine/vine seal/zeal choke/joke

[faɪn]/[vaɪn] [sil/zil] [ʧok]/[ʤok]

 peat/beat tote/dote kale/gale

[pit]/[bit] [tot]/[dot] [kel]/[gel]

 PLACE OF ARTICULATION

 We classify consonants according to where in the vocal tract the airflow restriction occurs,

called the place of articulation.

 Movement of the tongue and lips creates the constriction, reshaping the oral cavity in

various ways to produce the various sounds.

 We are about to discuss the major places of articulation.

 As you read the description of each sound class, which provides key words containing the

sounds. As you pronounce these words, try to feel which articulators are moving.
 Bilabials [p] [b] [m] When we produce a [p], [b], or [m], we articulate by bringing both

lips together.
 Labiodentals [f] [v] We also use our lips to form [f] and [v]. We articulate these sounds by

touching the bottom lip to the upper teeth.

 Interdentals [θ] [ð] These sounds, both spelled th, are pronounced by inserting the tip of the
tongue between the teeth.
 However, for some speakers the tongue merely touches behind the teeth, making a sound more
correctly called Dental.
 Watch yourself in a mirror and say think or these and see where your tongue tip goes.

 Alveolars [t] [d] [n] [s] [z] [l] [r] All seven of these sounds are pronounced with the tongue
raised in various ways to the alveolar ridge.
 For [t], [d], and [n] the tongue tip is raised and touches the ridge, or slightly in front of it.

 For [s] and [z] the sides of the front of the tongue are raised, but the tip is lowered so that air escapes
over it.
 For [l] the tongue tip is raised while the rest of the tongue remains down, permitting air to escape over
its sides. Hence, [l] is called a lateral sound.You can feel this in the l’s of Lolita.
 For [r] (IPA [ɹ]), most English speakers either curl the tip of the tongue back behind the alveolar ridge,
or bunch up the top of the tongue behind the ridge. As opposed to the articulation of [l], when [r] is
articulated, air escapes through the central part of the mouth. It is a central liquid.
 Palatals [ʃ] [ӡ] [ʧ] [ʤ] [j] For these sounds, which occur in mission [mɪʃən], measure [mɛӡər],

cheap [ʧip], judge [ʤʌʤ], and yoyo [jojo], the constriction occurs by raising the front part of
the tongue to the palate.
 Velars [k] [g] [ŋ] Another class of sounds is produced by raising the back of the tongue to the

soft palate or velum. The initial and final sounds of the words kick [kɪk] and gig [gɪg] and the
final sounds of the words back [bæk], bag [bæg], and bang [bæŋ] are all velar sounds.
 Uvulars [ʀ] [q] [ɢ] Uvular sounds are produced by raising the back of the tongue to the uvula,

the fleshy protuberance that hangs down in the back of our throats. The r in French is often a
uvular trill symbolized by [ʀ]. The uvular sounds [q] and [ɢ] occur in Arabic. These sounds do
not ordinarily occur in English.
 Glottals [h] [Ɂ] The sound of [h] is from the flow of air through the open glottis and past the

tongue and lips as they prepare to pronounce a vowel sound, which always follows [h].
 MANNER OF ARTICULATION

 Speech sounds also vary in the way the airstream is affected as it flows from the lungs up and
out of the mouth and nose. It may be blocked or partially blocked; the vocal cords may
vibrate or not vibrate.We refer to this as the Manner of Articulation.

 Stops/Plosive sounds [p] [b] [t] [d] [k] [g] Stops are consonants in which the airstream is
completely blocked in the oral cavity for a short period (tens of milliseconds). All other
sounds are continuants.
 The sound [t] is a stop, but the sound [s] is not, and that is what makes them different speech sounds.

 [p], [b], and [m] are bilabial stops, with the airstream stopped at the mouth by the complete closure
of the lips.

 [t], [d], and [n] are alveolar stops; the airstream is stopped by the tongue, making a complete closure
at the alveolar ridge.

 [k], [g], and [ŋ] are velar stops, with the complete closure at the velum.
 Fricatives [f] [v] [θ] [ð] [s] [z] [ʃ] [ӡ] [h] In the production of some continuants, the airflow is
so severely obstructed that it causes friction, and the sounds are therefore called fricatives.

 The first of each the following pairs of fricatives is voiceless; the second voiced.

 [f] and [v] are labiodental fricatives; the friction is created at the lips and teeth, where a narrow
passage permits the air to escape.

 [θ] and [ð] are interdental fricatives, represented by th in thin and then.

 The friction occurs at the opening between the tongue and teeth.

 [s] and [z] are alveolar fricatives, with the friction created at the alveolar ridge.

 [ʃ] and [ӡ] are palatal fricatives, and contrast in such pairs as mission [mɪʃən] and measure [mɛӡər].
They are produced with friction created as the air passes between the tongue and the part of the
palate behind the alveolar ridge.
 [h] is a glottal fricative. Its relatively weak sound comes from air passing through the open glottis
and pharynx.
 Affricates [ʧ] [ʤ] These sounds are produced by a stop closure followed
immediately by a gradual release of the closure that produces an effect
characteristic of a fricative.

 The palatal sounds that begin and end the words church and judge are voiceless
and voiced affricates, respectively. Affricates are not continuants because of the
initial stop closure.

 A Nasal consonant is a consonant whose production involves a lowered velum and

a closure in the oral cavity, so that air flows out through the nose.
 Examples of nasal consonants are [m], [n], and [ŋ] (as in think and sing).

 Continuants A speech sound that can be prolonged as long as the breath lasts,
with no significant change in the quality of the sound.
 Examples of Continuants consonants are [r], [l], [j] and [w]