PHONETICS: DEFINITION AND IMPORTANCE

 

DEFINITION

1.       The system of speech sounds of a language is called phonetics.

2.      The study and systematic classification of the sounds made in spoken utterance  is known as Phonetics.

3.       The practical application of this science to language study is known as Phonetics.

BRANCHES OF PHONETICS

1.     Acoustic phonetics - It is concerned with the Physical properties like frequency, wavelength etc. of our speech.

2.    Auditory phonetics – It is concerned with the study of listening any sound. It depends on how our brain and ears perceive the sound.

3.     Articulatory Phonetics – It is concerned with the production of sounds and their representation. It includes the movement of our sensory organs like tongue, lips as well as our vocal cords to pronounce a particular alphabet.

FUNCTIONS OF PHONETICS

It is the branch of linguistics that deals with the sounds of speech and their production, combination, description, and representation by written symbols. It, mainly, has three functions: 

1.     Description- It describes how sounds are produced. The study includes different speech organs and speech mechanisms.  

2.     Classification- Another function of Phonetics is to classify sounds into consonants and vowels.

3.      Transcription- Phonetics also represents speech sounds with symbols.

IMPORTANCE OF PHONETICS

Phonetics is a part of the English language which helps us to understand sounds of various alphabets. It makes us understand how a letter should sound.

1.    Phonetics helps to pronounce a particular word correctly.

 

 

2.    It is important for understanding the movements of speech organs like tongue, lips etc. while making sound of a letter or word.

3.    How a word should sound depends on our tongue movements, vocal cords, lip movements and even our breath.

For example to pronounce the letter ‘p’ both our upper and lower lip must touch each other but to pronounce the letter ‘o’ both the lips makes symbol ‘o’ and they don’t meet.

4.    Phonetics plays a very important role in improving our communication. All the letters and the words must sound correctly to impress others. 

5.    It reduces our problem of pronouncing different letters/words and their sounds-