The sounds of
language
Phonetics
The general study of the characteristics of
speech sounds is called phonetics. Our main
interest will be in articulatory phonetics, which
is the study of how speech sounds are made, or
articulated. Other areas of study are acoustic
phonetics, which deals with the physical
properties of speech as sound waves in the air,
and auditory phonetics (or perceptual
phonetics) which deals with the perception, via
the ear, of speech sounds.