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ENGLISH SPEECH SOUNDS 101

Overview

This series of articles from the Human Communication 101  series is entitled ENGLISH SPEECH SOUNDS 101. It introduces the reader to articulatory phonetics, the study of how the human vocal tract is used to produce speech sounds. In doing so, it identifies all sounds that are considered to be English speech sounds. These are divided into two broad categories:

  1. vowels
  2. consonants

Descriptions of the articulation of both types are provided, drawing on the concepts of voicing, manner and place of articulation.

Descriptions are given mainly in relation to two varieties of English: General  American (GA) and Standard Southern British English (SSBE).

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is introduced as a means of transcribing both vowel and consonant sounds.

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