Hey everyone, thanks for joining us, welcome. So today we'll be talking more about articulatory phonetics, which again is the study of the production of speech sounds in the vocal track. If you haven't already, please take a few minutes to look at our other videos in this series on describing consonant sounds and navigating the international phonetic alphabet. In this video, we will be talking about how linguists describe vowel sounds. So just a couple of notes. First, again, like in the consonant video, we'll only be talking about the phonetics of spoken languages rather than signed languages. And we will be talking about the vowel sounds as they are used in North American English. There are two types of vowel sounds, monophones and diphthongs. Perfhthongs involve one vowel quality and diphthongs involve two vowel qualities. Now, when linguists are describing vowel sounds, we have to rely on a different set of criteria from what we used in describing consonants. Because remember, vowels do not involve a constriction of airflow in the vocal track. So our tongue doesn't approach an anatomical landmark like they do with consonants. So the three criteria that linguists use when describing vowel sounds are height, weakness and roundedness. Let's talk about each of these in turn. Height refers to how high or low the tongue is in the mouth when producing the vowel. For example, consider the vowel sounds E and A. If you say both of these vowels in succession, you should feel your tongue going up and down as you say E, A, E, A. In terms of height, vowels are either considered high, mid or low. E is an example of a high vowel and A is an example of a low vowel. Backness refers to how far front or back the tongue is when producing the vowel. As with vowel height, this can be tricky as it takes some practice, but consider the vowels E and U. If you say these vowels in succession, you may notice that your tongue is moving forward and backward as you say E, U, E, U. In terms of backness, vowels are either considered front, central or back. Remember that E is a high vowel, but it's also a front vowel, while U is a back vowel. The third criteria that linguists use when describing vowels is roundedness. Roundedness means whether or not the lips are rounded when producing the vowel. Now this is something that's very easy as you can feel and see when you are producing a rounded sound, or when the person that you're talking to is producing a rounded sound. So again, take the two sounds that we just used, E and U. U, as you can clearly see, and feel, is a rounded vowel, whereas E is not a rounded vowel. E, U, E, U, E, U, E, U. Just like with consonants, there is a specific order that linguists use when describing vowel sounds. It is height, then backness, then roundedness. For example, U is a high back rounded vowel. A is a low front, unrounded vowel. Remember, so far we've only been talking about monopthong vowels. If we want to categorize diphthongs in terms of these criteria, we must do so for the starting vowel quality as well as the ending vowel quality. But we won't worry about that in this video. Alright, so what have we covered in this video? We talked about the criteria that linguists use when describing vowel sounds and the order that those criteria must appear in. And that's pretty much it for this video. But be sure to check out our other videos in describing consonant sounds and how to navigate the international phonetic alphabet. I hope you enjoyed this video. Thanks for watching.