So today we will be talking about articulatory phonetics.

This is the study of how speech sounds are produced in the vocal tract.

All of our articulators in our vocal tracts must work in concert to produce just one speech sound.

This is to say nothing of the complexity of these motor routines in casual speech.

So just a note, we will be focusing on the phonetics of spoken languages,

and more specifically consonant sounds in North American English in this video.

So what's the difference between consonants and vowels you might ask.

Well basically consonants involves some construction of airflow, whereas vowels do not.

When linguists described consonant sounds,

we use three criteria: voicing, place of articulation and manner of articulation.

Let's talk about each of these in turn.

Voicing or state of the glottis refers to what the vocal folds are doing.

When air passes through open vocal folds,

we call these voiceless sounds.

When air passes through vibrating vocal folds,

we call these voiced sounds.

You can feel the difference between voiced and voiceless sounds

by putting your hand right here on your adam's apple if you're male

or where your adam's apple would be if you're a female.

So produce these two sounds in succession

[s]

[z]

[s]

[z]

Which one produces the vibration?

You should feel that [z] produces a vibration. So it's a voiced sound.

whereas [s] does not produce the vibration. So it's a voiceless sound.

Place of articulation refers to where in the vocal track

the construction of airflow takes place.

Bilabial sounds are produced with both lips like [p], [b], [m].

Labiodental sounds are produced with the upper teeth and the low lips such as [f] [v].

Interdental sounds are produced with the tongue in between the upper and lower teeth such as [θ] [ð].

such as [θ] [ð].

Alveolar sounds are produced with the tongue at or near the ridge right behind upper front teeth

such as [t] [d] [s].

Palatal sounds are produced at the hard palate or the roof of the mouth

such as [ʃ] [ʒ] [j].

Velar sounds are produced at the velum or soft palate

such as [k] [g].

Glottal sounds are produced at the glottis or the space between the vocal folds

such as [h] or the catch in the throat as in Batman

Manner of articulation refers to how the airflow is constricted in the vocal tract.

Stop sounds result from a complete constriction of airflow followed by a release of that air

such as [p] [t] [k] [b] [d] [g].

Fricatives are sounds produced when the tongue approaches

but does not make contact with a place of articulation causing a bottleneck of the airflow.

This gives the sound a friction like quality

such as [v] [θ] [z] [ʃ].

Affricate results from the sequence of stop plus fricative in rapid succession.

So the affricate [ʧ] represents [t] plus [ʃ]

just as the affricate [ʤ] results from [d] plus [ʒ].

Nasal sounds are produced when the velum is lowered

allowing air to pass through the nasal cavity

such as [m] [n] [ŋ].

Liquid sounds are produced by allowing air to pass by one or both sides at the tongue

and the tongue itself can move a lot to shape the sound

such as [l] [ɹ].

Glide sounds are produced with very little constriction of air flow

so little in fact that they are often referred to as semi-vowels

such as [w] [j].

And finally we have tap sounds.

Tap sounds are involving rapid flick of the tongue to some place of articulation.

In North American English we only really have one tap, and that's at the alveolar ridge.

You can hear the tap sound in the word butter butter.

Notice where we write it with two "t"s in English that your tongue is producing a tap sound there

rather than a full stop.

So in North American English you say [bʌɾɹ],

now as compared to in received pronunciation

where you say [bʌtɹ] that involves a full [t] stop.

Okay we discussed these three criteria for describing consonant sounds:

voicing, place of articulation and manner of articulation.

and when linguists talk about a consonant sounds they do so in that order

so for example the sound [b] is considered a voiced bilabial stop.

[s] is a voiceless alveolar fricative.

That's it for this video. Thanks so much for watching. Hope you enjoyed it.

So please check out our other videos including articulatory phonetics and vowels

and also how to navigate the international phonetic alphabet.

See later.