Chapter 2: Producing Speech Sounds

In this chapter, we learn how humans produce speech sounds and how linguists classify speech sounds. Sounds are classified according to how they’re produced and what they sound like. We also begin to learn a notation system for representing speech sounds, since the English writing system is not very accurate or consistent in how it represents sounds.

When you’ve completed this chapter, you will be able to:

• Identify the parts of the body that humans use to produce speech sounds
• Classify speech sounds according to their articulatory and acoustic properties.
• Use the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to represent speech sounds.