ABSTRACT
Phonetics is the study of the sounds of speech. In order to understand this subject adequately, you will need to master a certain amount of new, technical terminology, along with a new alphabet. More importantly, however, it has an intellectual justification, for in studying phonetics you will be exploring the structure of the language. There are two main approaches to the description of speech sounds: the 'acoustic' and the 'articulatory'. The acoustic approach: it is possible to use instruments such as electrographs and palatographs to establish extremely precise, scientific descriptions of speech sounds. The articulatory approach: this viewpoint establishes descriptions of speech sounds on the basis of the way they are produced by the speaker. In phonetic terms, the difference between consonants and vowels is the degree of constriction used to produce each type of sound. It classifies the French consonants according to: (1) place of articulation; (2) manner of articulation; (3) presence or absence of voice.
