Phonetics and Phonology

Phonetics is a branch of linguistic that describe the speech sounds that occur across the languages,
it deals with the physical productions of the sounds, while phonology concerns itself with the ways
in which languages use sounds to stablish differences between words.

Phonetics branches
Acousticdescribes the physical properties of the running of sounds that is dispatch forth from the
mouth of a speaker.
Articulatory studies sound in relation to articulatory movements, which is the formation of clear and
distinct sounds in speech, in the vocal organs which develop them.

Other concepts related to this subject are:

Phoneme: is the smallest contrastive unit in the sound system of any language, which means that it
may have various ways of pronouncing the same letter, and these variants of phonemes are called
allophones.

Any alphabet is a high-handed system of symbols which can be used to set down speech in printed or
written form.

A phonetic alphabet is one in which every symbol stands unvarying for some particular speech sound.

Terms used to refer to the places of articulation of consonants:

Bilabial: made with the two lips coming together.
Labiodental: the lower lip is raised until it almost touches the upper front teeth.
Dental: the tip of the tongue is placed surpassing below the upper front teeth or close behind the
upper front teeth.
Alveolar: the tip of the tongue is placed against the alveolar ridge.
Palato-alveolar: the blade of the tongue is close to the back part of the alveolar ridge. The tip of the
tongue may be down behind the lower front teeth.
Palatal: the front of the tongue is raised towards the hard palate.
Velar: the back of the tongue is raised so that it touches the velum.
Glottal: consonants are jointed far back in the throat, in the glottis.

Another thin that I learned while reading about this subject is that speech is produced in the throat,
mouth, and nasal passage, but there are not “speech organs”, because all of the organs used in speech
have other, and maybe more fundamental, purposes involving eating and breathing. In almost all
speech sounds the basic source of power is the respiratory system pushing air out of the lungs.

Sources used for reading comprehension: English Phonetics (IDI-233)