Introduction

Welcome to our first post!!!

I’m María and this is going to be an introduction to phonetics.

First of all, it’s very important to find a definition for our object of study. So… what is phonetics? Well, phonetics is the study of human speech sounds and is divided in three branches: articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics and auditory phonetics. To understand well these branches we have to look at the communication scheme:

 In the first step (the source) we find articulatory phonetics, because this branch studies how speech sounds are produced. In the second step (the channel) we find acoustics phonetics, which studies sound waves. And finally, in the last step (the receiver) we find auditory phonetics, which studies how speech sounds are perceived. Easy, isn't it?

Phonetics is therefore interdisciplinary, because to study all these aspects of human speech is necessary to be closely related to disciplines as physiology or acoustics for example.

There are also numerous areas in which phonetic provides its contents, as in speech therapy (a medical specialty that deals with problems related to voice) or in forensic phonetics (the use of phonetic knowledge in criminal cases).

 The object of study of phonetics is the spoken language, but our image of the language is based on writing, although we know that the spoken language is prior to writing (in history and in the development of a child). You have to study in detail the relationship between spelling and sound because a letter can be related with two or more sounds and a sound can be related with two or more letters. To solve this problem we use phonetics alphabets as IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet).

In the next post we are going to see in detail the first branch of phonetics with Ana.

I hope you find this useful. J