Hey everybody, welcome. Thanks for joining us. So today we will be talking about articulatory phonetics. This is the study of how speech sounds are produced in the vocal tract. All of our articulators in our vocal tracks must work in concert to produce just one speech sound. This is to say nothing of the complexity of these motor routines in casual speech. So just a note, we will be focusing on the phonetics of spoken languages and more specifically consonant sounds in North American English in this video. So what's the difference between consonants and vowels you might ask? Well basically consonants involve some constriction of airflow, whereas vowels do not. When linguists describe consonant sounds, we use three criteria. Focusing, place of articulation and manner of articulation. Let's talk about each of these in turn. Voicing or state of the glottis refers to what the vocal folds are doing. When air passes through open vocal folds, we call these voiceless sounds. When air passes through vibrating vocal folds, we call these voiced sounds. You can feel the difference between voiced and voiceless sounds by putting your hand right here on your Adam's apple if you're a male or where your Adam's apple would be if you're a female. So produce these two sounds in succession. Which one produces the vibration? You should feel that the produces a vibration, so it's a voiced sound, whereas the voice of the sound, place of articulation refers to where in the vocal tract the constriction of airflow takes place. Bylabial sounds are produced with both lips, like p, b, m. Maybeodental sounds are produced with the upper teeth and the lower lip, such as ff, b. Interdental sounds are produced with the tongue in between the upper and lower teeth, such as ff, b. Alveolar sounds are produced with the tongue at or near the ridge right behind the upper front teeth, such as t, d, s. Bylabial sounds are produced at the hard palate or the roof of the mouth, such as ff, b, b. Bylabial sounds are produced at the vealum or soft palate, such as k, g. And glottal sounds are produced at the glottis, or the space between the vocal folds, such as ff, or the catching the throat as in batman. Manor of articulation refers to how the airflow is constricted in the vocal tract. Stop sounds result from a complete constriction of airflow, followed by a release of that air, such as p, t, g, b, d, g. Frickatives are sounds produced when the tongue approaches but does not make contact with a place of articulation, causing a bottleneck of the airflow. This gives the sound a friction-like quality, such as ff, z, s. Africates result from the sequence of stop plus fricative in rapid succession, so the africate ch represents t plus s, just as the africate ch results from d plus s. Nasal sounds are produced when the vealum is lowered, allowing air to pass through the nasal cavity, such as m, m, l. Liquid sounds are produced by allowing air to pass by one or both sides of the tongue, and the tongue itself can move a lot to shape the sound, such as o, r. Glide sounds are produced with very little constriction of airflow, so little in fact that they are often referred to as semi-vowels, such as w, y. And finally, we have tap sounds. Tap sounds involve a rapid flick of the tongue to some place of articulation. In North American English, we only really have one tap, and that's at the alveolar ridge. You can hear the tap sound in the word butter. Butter. Now notice where we write it with two T's in English, that your tongue is producing a tap sound there, rather than a full stop or plosive sound. So in North American English you say butter, now as compared to in receive pronunciation where you say butter, that involves a full stop. Okay, we've discussed these three criteria for describing consonant sounds, voicing, place of articulation, and manner of articulation. And when linguists talk about a consonant sound, they do so in that order. So for example, the sound B is considered a voiced bilavial stop. Is a voiceless alveolar fricative. That's it for this video. Thanks so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed it. So please check out our other videos, including articulatory phonetics and vowels, and also how to navigate the international phonetic alphabet. See you later.