What is Phonetics and Why do we Study it?
PHONETICS Phonetics is simply the study of speech sounds. It is the general study of sounds we produced in speech. What do we mean by general study? In phonetics, we are not concerned usually with a specific language. A phonetician can transcribe any language into a phonetic transcription (which we shall study later), by using his/her knowledge about speech sounds. Phonetics can also be defined as the scientific study of speech sounds. We divide phonetics into 3 main areas: 1. Articulatory Phonetics: We study the speech organs which are used in producing speech, these usually include lips, teeth, alveolar ridge, hard palatal, soft palatal (velum), tongue (which is divided into tip, centre, front, back and root). We shall discuss these organs in another post. You can watch my video, where I have described all...