Summary
Highlights
Articulatory phonetics is the study of how speech sounds are produced in the vocal tract, requiring the coordinated effort of all articulators. This video will focus on consonant sounds in North American English.
Consonants involve some constriction of airflow, unlike vowels. Linguists use three criteria to describe consonant sounds: voicing, place of articulation, and manner of articulation.
Voicing refers to the action of the vocal folds. Voiceless sounds occur when air passes through open vocal folds, while voiced sounds occur when air passes through vibrating vocal folds. You can feel this difference by touching your Adam's apple during an 's' (voiceless) and 'z' (voiced) sound.
Place of articulation describes where in the vocal tract the airflow is constricted. Examples include bilabial (both lips like 'p', 'b', 'm'), labiodental (upper teeth and lower lip like 'f', 'v'), interdental (tongue between teeth like 'θ', 'ð'), alveolar (tongue near the ridge behind upper teeth like 't', 'd', 's'), palatal (tongue at hard palate like 'ʃ', 'ʒ', 'j'), velar (tongue at soft palate like 'k', 'g'), and glottal (at the glottis like 'h' or the catch in 'Batman').
Manner of articulation refers to how the airflow is constricted. This includes stops (complete constriction and release like 'p', 't', 'k', 'b', 'd', 'g'), fricatives (tongue approaches but doesn't touch, creating friction like 'v', 'θ', 'z', 'ʃ'), affricates (sequence of stop plus fricative like 'ʧ', 'ʤ'), nasals (airflow through nasal cavity like 'm', 'n', 'ŋ'), liquids (air passes by one or both sides of the tongue like 'l', 'ɹ'), glides (very little constriction, often called semi-vowels like 'w', 'j'), and taps (rapid flick of the tongue, e.g., the 't' in 'butter' in North American English).
Linguists describe consonant sounds in a specific order: voicing, then place of articulation, then manner of articulation. For example, 'b' is a voiced bilabial stop, and 's' is a voiceless alveolar fricative.