Study of Speech Sounds

The study of speech sounds is divided into two main, complementary fields:

• Phonetics (Study of Speech Sounds in Isolation) Phonetics treats speech sounds as independent, physical units (often called phones). Phoneticians study sounds and their physical and acoustic properties in isolation. Square brackets are used to do phonetic transcription: [ə,æ,ɪː]
• Phonology (Study of Speech Sounds in a Language System) Phonology studies how speech sounds behave in relation to other sounds, syllables and words. It is language-specific, focusing on how a particular language uses a subset of available sounds to convey meaning. Phonologists study functional, cognitive and rule-based organizational systems of sound. Slashes are used to transcribe phonemes(smallest units of sound that can distinguish meaning): / p, b, l /