Harnessing the International Phonetic Alphabet: Vowels

Can you believe the sheer amount of sounds the human mouth can make just with two organs: the tongue and the lips? As infants, we've intuitively- through our premature cognitive functions- recognized and adapted to the world by attempting to communicate our very first sounds, often "oohs" or "aahs," if anything. But the fascinating thing is that oftentimes, the first sounds that humans make as babies are often vowels, even if it's just simple cooing as an instinctual response to a parent's love.

And as linguists and studiers of the various intricacies of human speech phonetics, we revisit these basic sounds, and find that they're often not as basic as we'd previously thought. Unlike consonants, which actually have a reference point for the tongue to strike, the fact that even vowels can be produced with such accuracy allows you to realize how seriously amazing the human phonatory system really is. So today, let's dive into the different aspects of vowels and how we can categorize them via the IPA!

I added a physics pun as well as a mathematics intro; pardon me for the humor.

Summary: Vowels are defined as sounds in which airflow is not constricted/obstructed, but rather shaped by the tongue's position. According to the IPA, all vowels can be classified through the tongue's height and location in the mouth, the rounding of the lips, tension and laxity, as well as special modifiers such as nasalization and intonation.

Answers to the practice transcriptions: [ʉ], [ʌ], [ø], [ə], [ɶ], [ɪ], [ɑ˞], [ɛ̰], [ɤ́], [ỹ], challenge - [ɯ̰̃́˞]

Once again, here's the same reliable online IPA chart that gives you all of the pronunciations when you click on each symbol. I highly encourage you to do a little exploring yourself: https://www.ipachart.com. Good luck with your ooh-ing and aah-ing.

Stay tuned for IPA: special sounds, soon!
Description-editor out.
September 2024