Something New Every Day — Articulative Phoenetics
The physical production of human sounds can be described by seven major sound descriptions, closely linked to the shape of the human mouth.
- Labial sounds – (sounds made by shaping of the lips) – ‘p’ and ‘b’ ‘m’
- Dental sounds (sounds made by incorporating the teeth) - ‘f’, ‘v’
- Interdental sounds (sounds made by moving the tongue between the teeth) ‘th’
- Alveolar sounds (sounds made by using the ridge of the upper jaw bone behind the top teeth) – ‘s,’ ‘ch’, ‘t’, ‘d’, ‘n’, ‘l’
- palatal sounds (sounds made by pressing the tongue up into the palate area) – ‘pl’
- velar sounds (sounds made by pressing the back of the tongue against the back of the palate) ‘c’, ‘g’, ‘ng’
- glottal sounds (sounds made right at the back of the throat, or glottis area) ‘h’
In theory, you should be able to make a sound that approximates the sound I’m thinking of just by thinking about where the sound is made. So if I said the word started with a dental sound then a high vowel then a dental sound you could get a word that’s close to ‘five’ (course it could also be ‘fief’ or ‘faff’).
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