Скачать или смотреть Introduction to Phonetics from George Yule, Chapter 3

This video describes the sounds of English language. Phonetics studies speech sounds from different viewpoints and is broken down into three categories that are studied in linguistics:

Articulatory phonetics: the production of speech sounds
Acoustic phonetics: the physical way speech sounds travel
Auditory phonetics: the way people perceive speech sounds
Our speech organs are:

Lips
Teeth
Tongue
Palate
Uvula (the teardrop-shaped soft tissue that hangs at the back of your throat)
Nasal and oral cavities
Vocal cords

Usually, two speech organs make contact with each other to affect the airflow and create a sound. The point where the two speech organs make the most contact is named the place of articulation. The way in which the contact forms and then releases is named the manner of articulation.

Let's look at the [p] sound as an example.

To produce the [p] sound, we join our lips together tightly (place of articulation). This causes a slight build-up of air, which is then released when the lips part (manner of articulation), creating a burst of sound associated with the letter P in English.

In English, there are two main sounds we create: consonants and vowels.

Consonants are speech sounds created by the partial or total closure of the vocal tract. In contrast, vowels are speech sounds produced without stricture in the vocal tract (meaning the vocal tract is open and the air can escape without generating a fricative or plosive sound).

Let's take a closer look at the production of consonant and vowel sounds.

Consonants
“A consonant is a speech sound which is pronounced by stopping the air from flowing easily through the mouth, especially by closing the lips or touching the teeth with the tongue”.

(Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary)

The study of the production of consonant sounds can be divided into three areas: voice, place of articulation, and manner of articulation.

Voice
In articulatory phonetics, voice refers to the presence or absence of vibration of the vocal cords.

There are two types of sound:

Voiceless sounds - These are made when the air passes through the vocal folds, with no vibration during the production of sounds, like [s] as in sip.
Voiced sounds - These are made when the air passes through the vocal folds, with vibration during the production of sounds like [z] as in zip.
Place of Articulation
The place of articulation refers to the point where the construction of airflow takes place.

There are seven different types of sounds based on the place of articulation:

Bilabial - Sounds produced with both lips, such as [p], [b], [m].
Labiodentals - Sounds produced with the upper teeth and the lower lip, such as [f] and [v].
Interdental - Sounds produced with the tongue in between the upper and lower teeth, such as [θ] (the 'th' sound in think).
Alveolar - Sounds produced with the tongue at or near the ridge right behind upper front teeth, such as [t], [d], [s].
Palatal - Sounds produced at the hard palate or the roof of the mouth, such as [j], [ʒ] (measure), [ʃ] (should).
Velars - Sounds produced at the velum or soft palate, such as [k] and [g].
Glottals - Sounds produced at the glottis or the space between the vocal folds, such as [h] or the glottal stop sound [ʔ] (as in uh-oh).
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