Articulatory phonetics studies how humans physically produce speech sounds using the vocal tract. Consonants are classified by place of articulation (where the constriction occurs), manner of articulation (how airflow is modified), and voicing (whether the vocal cords vibrate). Vowels are described by tongue height, tongue backness, and lip rounding. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) provides a universal notation system for transcribing any sound in any language.
Practice transcribing words in IPA, starting with English. Use mirror exercises to observe your own articulation. Compare minimal pairs (like /p/ vs /b/) to internalize the voicing distinction.
Every word you have ever spoken is the product of your body: air pushed from the lungs, shaped by the larynx, tongue, lips, teeth, and palate into a specific stream of sound. Articulatory phonetics is the systematic study of that shaping process. Rather than working with spelling — which in English is a notoriously unreliable guide to pronunciation — articulatory phonetics describes sounds in terms of the physical gestures that produce them.
Consonants are classified along three dimensions. Place of articulation describes where in the vocal tract the main constriction happens: bilabial (both lips, as in /p/ and /b/), alveolar (tongue tip at the ridge behind upper teeth, as in /t/, /d/, /s/), velar (back of tongue at soft palate, as in /k/ and /g/), and several others. Manner of articulation describes how the airflow is modified: stops (complete closure then release), fricatives (narrow channel creating turbulent friction), nasals (air diverted through the nose), liquids, glides. Voicing is a binary distinction: either the vocal cords are vibrating (voiced: /b/, /d/, /z/) or they are not (voiceless: /p/, /t/, /s/). These three dimensions together uniquely identify every consonant. The pair /p/ and /b/, for instance, are identical in place (bilabial) and manner (stop) but differ only in voicing — called a minimal pair, they are the clearest possible demonstration that voicing is a meaningful phonetic contrast.
Vowels require a different framework because there is no complete constriction — the vocal tract remains relatively open. Vowels are described by tongue height (high, mid, low), tongue backness (front, central, back), and lip rounding (rounded or unrounded). English "beat" /iː/ is a high front unrounded vowel; "boot" /uː/ is high back rounded; "bat" /æ/ is low front unrounded. These dimensions correspond to real muscular movements you can feel: say "beat" and then "boot" and you will feel your tongue move from front to back. Say "bat" and "bet" and you will feel the tongue drop.
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is the notation system that makes all of this precise and universal. Each IPA symbol maps to exactly one sound, regardless of language or spelling conventions. The English letter "c" represents the sound /k/ in "cat" and /s/ in "city" — two completely different sounds. IPA resolves this by using /k/ and /s/ respectively, always. Learning IPA is not about memorizing an alphabet — it is about building a one-to-one correspondence between symbols and physical speech gestures, which is the foundation for everything in phonology and linguistic analysis that follows.
This is a foundational topic with no prerequisites.
No prerequisites — this is a starting point.