the.com/phonetics
the science proving your mouth is a tiny, sloppy orchestra you barely conduct.
means The branch of linguistics that studies the physical sounds of human speech — how they're produced, transmitted, and heard.
from From Greek 'phōnē,' meaning sound or voice — the same root behind 'telephone,' 'symphony,' and 'megaphone.' The '-ics' ending marks it as a field of study, like 'physics' or 'mathematics.' The term entered English in the 19th century as the scientific study of speech sounds came into its own.
- sound count
- Human languages use over 800 distinct speech sounds.
- click languages
- Some tongues use clicks as ordinary consonants.
- alphabet
- The IPA assigns one symbol per possible speech sound.
- voiceprint
- Vocal tract shape makes every voice physically unique.
- silent reading
- Your throat muscles twitch even when reading silently.
for instance
great vowel shift — 12th-15th century sound change in english that altered pronunciation of long vowels
received pronunciation — british english accent standard based on southern england upper-class speech patterns