Phonetics was studied as early as 500 BC in the Indian subcontinent , with Pāṇini 's account of the place and manner of articulation of consonants in his 5th century BC treatise on Sanskrit .
The first time phonetics was studied was 2,500 years ago in what is now India , with Pāṇini , when he wrote about the place and manner of articulation of consonants in Sanskrit in his 5th century BC essay on Sanskrit linguistics .