What Is Phonetics?

By
Richard Nordquist
Updated July 03, 2019

Phonetics is the branch of linguistics that deals with the sounds

of speech and their production, combination, description, and
representation by written symbols. Adjective: phonetic. Pronounced [fah-
NET-iks]. From the Greek, "sound, voice"

A linguist who specializes in phonetics is known as a phonetician. As

discussed below, the boundaries between the disciplines of phonetics
and phonology aren't always sharply defined.

Examples and Observations of Phonetics

 "Linguistics contributes to phonetics its phonological
understanding of the distinctive patterns that make up the coded,
conventional aspects of speech which differentiate individual words
and other units of spoken language. Phonetics contributes to
linguistics its phonetic understanding of the production and
perception of the detailed artefacts of speech that embody those
significant phonological patterns. Each contribution is
complemented by the other."

The Study of Phonemes

 "In any language we can identify a small number of regularly used

sounds (vowels and consonants) that we call phonemes; for
example, the vowels in the words 'pin' and 'pen' are different
phonemes, and so are the consonants at the beginning of the words
'pet' and 'bet.' Because of the notoriously confusing nature of
English spelling, it is particularly important to learn to think of
English pronunciation in terms of phonemes rather than letters of
the alphabet; one must be aware, for example, that the word
'enough' begins with the same vowel phoneme as that at the
beginning of 'inept' and ends with the same consonant as 'stuff.'"

Phonetics and the Brain

 "Until recently, we knew little about what is going on in the brain

when people are speaking, and this is why the science
of phonetics has concentrated on the three central components of
the speech chain, where observation of what is going on is fairly
straightforward. However, our understanding of how the brain
works in speech communications has grown enormously in recent
 years. One of the most significant advances in recent research has
been the development of safe and accurate brain-scanning
techniques that can show us the activities of different parts of the
brain when someone is speaking or listening to speech..."

Experimental Phonetics

 "Phonetics is the study of speech. Traditionally, phoneticians have

relied on their ears and eyes, and their awareness of their own vocal
organs, to study pronunciation. Increasingly, however, they have
been using instruments of various types to supplement the
information they derive from their own sensations. Experimental
phonetics, as the term is commonly used, includes any investigation
of speech by means of instruments. It is understood here that the
instruments are used to visualize some aspect of the speech event,
and possibly also to provide a basis for measurements. For
example, a tape recording for the purpose of repeated listening does
not fall within the scope of experimental phonetics, but if the tape
recording is fed into a computer and used to produce an acoustic
analysis, the activity would be described as an experimental
investigation."

The Phonetics-Phonology Interface

 "Phonetics interfaces with phonology in three ways. First,

phonetics defines distinctive features. Second, phonetics explains
many phonological patterns. These two interfaces constitute what
has come to be called the 'substantive grounding' of phonology.

Sources
 John Laver, "Linguistic Phonetics." The Handbook of Linguistics, ed. by
Mark Aronoff and Janie Rees-Miller. Blackwell, 2001
 Peter Roach, English Phonetics and Phonology: A Practical Course, 4th ed.
Cambridge University Press, 2009
 (Peter Roach, Phonetics. Oxford University Press, 2001)
 Katrina Hayward, Experimental Phonetics: An Introduction. Routledge,
2014

What Is a Phoneme?
By
Richard Nordquist
Updated July 03, 2019
In linguistics, a phoneme is the smallest sound unit in a language that is
capable of conveying a distinct meaning, such as the s of sing and
the r of ring. Adjective: phonemic.

Phonemes are language-specific. In other words, phonemes that are

functionally distinct in English (for example, /b/ and /p/) may not be so
in another language. (Phonemes are customarily written between slashes,
thus /b/ and /p/.) Different languages have different phonemes.

Etymology: From the Greek, "sound"

Pronunciation: FO-neem

Examples and Observations

 "The central concept in phonology is the phoneme, which is a
distinctive category of sounds that all the native speakers of a
language or dialect perceive as more or less the same...[A]lthough
the two [k] sounds in kicked are not identical—the first one is
pronounced with more aspiration than the second—they are heard
as two instances of [k] nonetheless...Since phonemes are categories
rather than actual sounds, they are not tangible things; instead,
they are abstract, theoretical types or groups that are only
psychologically real. (In other words, we cannot hear phonemes,
but we assume they exist because of how the sounds in languages
pattern as they are used by speakers.)" (Thomas E. Murray, The
Structure of English: Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology. Allyn
and Bacon, 1995)
 "Two points need to be stressed: (1) the most important property of
a phoneme is that it contrasts with the other phonemes in the
system, and hence (2) we can only speak of the phoneme of some
particular speech variety (a particular accent of a particular
language). Languages differ in the number of phonemes they
distinguish...but every valid word in every language necessarily
consists of some permissible sequence of that language's
phonemes." (R.L. Trask, A Dictionary of Phonetics and Phonology.
Routledge, 2004)

An Alphabetical Analogy: Phonemes and

Allophones
 "The concepts of phoneme and allophone become clearer by
analogy with the letters of the alphabet. We recognize that
a symbol is a despite considerable variations in size, colour, and (to
a certain extent) shape. The representation of the letter a is affected
in handwriting by the preceding or following letters to which it is
 joined. Writers may form the letter idiosyncratically and may vary
their writing according to whether they are tired or in a hurry or
nervous. The variants in the visual representations are analogous to
the allophones of a phoneme, and what is distinctive in contrast to
other alphabetic letters is analogous to the phoneme." (Sidney
Greenbaum, The Oxford English Grammar. Oxford University
Press, 1996)

Differences Between Members of a Phoneme

 "We cannot rely on the spelling to tell us whether two sounds are
members of different phonemes. For example...the
words key and car begin with what we can regard as the same
sound, despite the fact that one is spelled with the letter k and the
other with c. But in this case, the two sounds are not exactly the
same...If you whisper just the first consonants in these two words,
you can probably hear the difference, and you may be able to feel
that your tongue touches the roof of the mouth in a different place
for each word. This example shows that there may be very subtle
differences between members of a phoneme. The sounds at the
beginning of key and car are slightly different, but it is not a
difference that changes the meaning of a word in English. They are
both members of the same phoneme." (Peter Ladefoged and Keith
Johnson, A Course in Phonetics, 6th ed. Wadsworth, 2011)

Tongue Twisters for ESL Learners

By
Kenneth Beare
Updated December 31, 2018

Tongue twisters are short, memorable lines that are difficult to

pronounce, especially rapidly, because of alliteration or a slight variation
of consonant sounds, and are especially useful in pronunciation when
focusing on related phonemes, or sounds.

In other words, there are several "s" sounds such as "sh," "z" and "tch,"
and a tongue twister focuses on the minor changes in the mouth required
to move between these sounds. By changing back and forth a number of
times to the different sounds, students can improve their knowledge of
the specific physical movements required for that particular phoneme set.
Learning a tongue twister employs musical intelligence, which is one of
the multiple intelligences of learners. Another example of this type of
learning includes grammar chants. These types of exercises build up
muscle memory related to speech, making it easier to recall later.

Fun but Not Necessarily Accurate

Tongue twisters are lots of fun, but they often don't make much sense, so
it's important to warn students before introducing them to tongue
twisters that they're not meant to be learning guides for using proper
grammar. Rather, they should be used for exercising pronunciation
muscles.

For instance, in the old nursery rhyme tongue twister called "Peter Piper,"
the content of the story may make sense in terms of narrative, but the
phrase "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," doesn't actually
work because you cannot pick already pickled peppers. Similarly, in
"Woodchuck," the speaker asks "how much wood could a woodchuck
chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood," which would make sense if only
woodchucks didn't chuck wood with their teeth.

For this reason, when introducing an ESL student to English tongue

twisters, it's doubly important to go over what the limericks mean in the
context of the piece as well as in the context of the words on their own,
paying special attention to common idioms that don't make sense when
directly translated to a foreign language.

Practice Makes Perfect

A very large part of understanding how to speak a foreign language
properly comes in understanding how the muscles of the mouth are
meant to move to elicit certain sounds and pronunciations—that's why
tongue twisters are so handy in teaching ESL students to speak English
correctly and quickly.

Because tongue twisters consists of so many slight variations on the same

sound, all of which are used colloquially in American English, the ESL
learner is able to get a clear grasp of how "pen" sounds different from
"pin" or "pan," despite sharing a majority of the same letters and
consonant sounds.

In the poem "Sally Sells Sea Shells by the Sea Shore," for instance, the
speaker is able to go through every variation of the "s" sound in English,
learning the difference between "sh" and "s" as well as "z" and "tch."
Similarly, "Betty Botter" and "A Flea and a Fly" walk the speaker through
all the "b" and "f" sounds.