Phonetics is the study of speech sounds that are made within a language.� Each language possesses it�s own grouping of sounds used in speech within that language.� You may have heard some languages use sounds that you are unfamiliar with in the past; a good example would be the clicking noise used in the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy by the native African man.� These noises are normal sounds in the lexicon of the language he was using, yet are unfamiliar to the ear of the English-speaking world.�
In an effort to categorize the sounds, or phones made in speech across the world, linguist have developed a universal alphabet called the International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA, with the hopes of representing every speech sound made by human beings used during communication.� This alphabet will be covered in-depth later in this tutorial.� Next we will consider the different Units of Representation.� Click next.
(O�Grady 15-16)
������ O' Grady, William, Archibald, John, Aronoff Mark, Rees-Miller, Janie. Contemporary Linguistics
5th Edition. Boston: Bedford St. Martin's, 2005.