so let's talk about your mouth have you
ever really thought about your mouth
because it's pretty amazing people have
got all these articulate errs all these
moving parts that work together to make
the huge variety of sounds that we use
for language you use incredible finesse
and control to perform the urgent job of
transforming your thoughts into words
and today we're going to talk about just
what those articulate errs do I'm moti
Lieberman and this is the Ling space
welcome to the Ling space
there are different ways to count but at
the very least there are over 100
consonant sounds in the world and
depending on your dialect of English you
might have a different number but for my
variety I've got 24 linguists have come
up with specific symbols for all of them
called the international phonetic
alphabet or IPA and stuck them together
in cool charts like this we saw these in
episode 12 but let's look into what
these cool little symbols mean in more
detail we're going to stick with a
consonant chart for today and come back
to the vowel chart in a later episode
the consonant chart may look scary but
there's actually a whole system there
the columns are for place of
articulation these shall wear in the
vocal tract the sound is crafted like in
your throat at your soft palate between
your teeth and so on you can see there's
a lot of different places and that's
because even though the inside of your
mouth might not be a large area we've
divided it up into tiny little phonetic
territories the rows on the other hand
tells about manner of articulation or
the particular way that the air
interacts with your mouth bits to make
the sound you can let the air through
free and easy or only angry hissy
streams of it or just stop it completely
the order the IPA chart is written in
tells us how to make the sounds to the
further to the left you go the further
forward in the vocal tract the sound is
pronounced for example up at the top
left here we have bull which is a
bilabial stop so it's made with both of
your lips by labial and the air doesn't
make it out of your vocal tract at all
your lips just outright plug it up just
try saying a pull without a vowel after
it see no air and because your lips are
all the way at the end of the vocal
tract the bilabial sounds are found at
the left edge of the chart when you go
back from your lips you find your teeth
and so dental sounds are the next stop
maybe Oh dental sounds use both the lips
and teeth so sounds like fun qualify on
the other hand interdental sounds like
the are made by putting your tongue in
between your teeth the nice things about
consonants this far forward is that it's
really easy to see how you make them you
can see the for the in action if you
keep working your way down the vocal
tract you'll hit a few more places of
articulation one pretty useful
one you might not know about is the
alveolar Ridge that curvy slope right
behind your front teeth and just at the
beginning of the roof of your mouth you
can make all kinds of really common
consonants there like owl or certain mmm
in fact more kinds of consonants are
made at the alveolar Ridge than at any
other place just about any way you can
make a consonant you can do it at the
alveolar Ridge post alveolar sounds like
Shh charmagne just a little back from
the alveolar Ridge but not all the way
to the hard palate you want to use all
the space after all so you go and make
some sounds
the next place on the chart is actually
a little bit different it's actually
smuggling a manner of making consonants
into the columns meant for place
retroflex sounds involve curling the
tongue up to make the closure against
the top of the mouth so to make sounds
like dough or sha or mmm they don't
really show up in English but they're
pretty common cross-linguistically
you get the mid languages like Tamil
Hausa and polish and we list them here
because the folding back still puts the
tongue in the same general place as your
regular toes and nose it's just the
other side of the tongue okay now we're
getting nice and far back in the mouth
two sounds that you make with the main
body of your tongue so palatal sounds
are made at the hard palate that's solid
place at the top of your mouth we don't
have a ton of these in English either
but if you go yup then that's where
palatal sounds live we also have the
hear sound in German words like ich your
mix placed here what we do have in
English though our velar sounds or
sounds that are made against the soft
palate or reveal them that's the squishy
bit that's right behind the hard palate
here's where our cause and goes hang out
also our moons which is the sound that
you get at the end of words like sing or
raw it might seem like these are two
separate sounds but if you feel how your
mouth moves when you make a word like
pang you'll notice that your tongue
never goes anywhere near the alveolar
Ridge it's all up at the back pillowing
up against the soft palate now our next
column is for uvular sounds they're made
against that little dangly punching bag
thing at the back of your throat do you
feel up these don't exist in English at
all but we make the French club back
there as well as sounds like on haw
which exists in languages from Aleut to
arabic finally we have sounds that are
made
even further down like right in the
throat some of these like the pharyngeal
at the glottal sounds are me by
constricting the airflow just above the
vocal folds and the larynx
but the farthest back plates you can
make a consonant is in the larynx itself
these are known as glottal sounds from
the technical term glottis the space
that appears between the vocal folds
when they open for air to pass through
we've got a couple of these sounds in
English one is hub which is a glottal
fricative but the other you might not
have even noticed is a sound before it's
the sudden stop in a middle the word
like uh-oh or the Samba Fortin in button
this is called the glottal stop and even
though it's not widespread in English
it's still part of our inventory of
sounds okay so those are all the places
of articulation these are the columns in
our table from left to right in the
chart and from front to back in our
mouths now let's go back and check out
what rows we have they represent the
different manners of articulation or the
way that you can caught up the airflow
as it passes through your vocal tract
these generally go in the chart from
most close to most open so from top to
bottom so up top we have pluses which
are also known as stops like you guessed
from the name these are pronounced by
stopping the air completely and then
letting it go again our old friends
petanque are here as well as budeau and
go and of course there are other stops
too like the oh that we talked about
earlier whenever you're pushing air from
your lungs and it can't escape from your
mouth until you let go that's a stop but
what if you stopped air from getting out
of your mouth but you've even another
escape route like say through your nose
down one row we have the nasals your
moons and moons but also the moon we saw
before here the air only comes out of
your nose there's a complete stop in
your mouth but you lower your soft
palate and the air rushes out the only
way it can through your nasal cavity
that's why when you have a cold and your
nose is clogged up your nose sound a lot
like Dawn's duh no or the same sound if
you take your nose away the next rows
are for sounds that are like stops but
just executed really rapidly trills
involve closing it opening the airflow
multiple times quickly in the same place
just drumming one articulator against
another so it's like the alveolar trill
that you get in Spanish for
like in words like Boudreau or donkey or
the bilabial trail Oh which shows up in
the ass word for jaw see if he taps also
known as flaps are just like a trill
except instead of repeating the movement
over and over you just do it once the
notes sound and butter is a flop for
example as is the middle consonant in
the Japanese word for spicy kadai the
next bunch of sounds finally get away
from total closure of the mouth and
they're known as fricatives fricatives
are noisy sounds there does come out
unlike with plosives but it is mostly
obstructed still so it comes out in a
pretty hissy kind of way now we can get
these guys at pretty much every place of
articulation a few nice examples are mmm
which are labial dental fricative or
Sens which are alveolar wants the most
free-flowing kind of consonants are
known as approximate for these sounds
air can make it up pretty easily from
the lungs and out of the mouth but it's
not quite as smooth arises as with
vowels where the air is super free now
English has three regular approximants
or you and whoa these sounds have very
strong acoustic profiles they're loud
and easy to hear you and whoa are almost
exactly the same as the vowels in oh
just said really quickly just hold a
yard C E but they behave basically like
consonants for how languages treat them
you'll note that there are two other
rules there as well for lateral
fricatives and approximants what's that
lateral thing about well usually air
just flows right out through the middle
of our mouths but that's not the only
way for it to go you can also block up
the middle of the mouth but curl down
the sides of your tongue and let the air
escape that way that's why these sounds
are known as laterals
they've got side flow just feel what you
do with your tongue for all and English
like in lucky sides down right but if
they don't go all the way down you can
get tight fricative style flow around
the sides of the tongue like in the
welsh word for the other huh finally
maybe you've noticed that we've been
pairing up sounds together on the chart
like fan move or Sens that's because
there's one other way in which sounds
can differ
besides place and manner of articulation
sounds can also be voiced or voiceless
depending on whether your vocal folds
are vibrating or not while
you see them now you can see this for
yourself just put your fingers here on
your throat and then say now you might
hear a little bit of hissing in your
mouth but that's where it ends right
okay now switch you lose whoa now your
throat is all vibrate you - that's
because this is sound is voiced and
voiceless now the same is true for mmm
and try it out all weight as huge as the
IPA chart can seem it really covers only
a fraction of the sounds that human
language contains we can add a whole
bunch of diacritics or symbols on or
next to the letter to show exactly how
you're pronouncing things now if you're
curious about what those look like we
have some information about it back on
our website but you can see just how
much we can capture using only these
three dimensions where we pronounce
things how much air we let through and
whether we're vibrating while we do it
we only need three factors to show you
just how amazing your mouth really is so
we've reached the end of the Ling space
for this week if you correctly read the
places of my articulate errs you learned
that the IPA chart is organized by place
and manner of articulation that we
divide up the inside of our mouth into
tiny little regions from the lips back
to the larynx that we distinguish
different consonants based on how much
air can escape from the vocal tract and
how it gets out and there we can make
even more sounds by vibrating our vocal
folds while we talk the Ling space is
produced by me moti Lieberman it's
directed by beta used clay hoe then it's
written by both of us our production
assistant is yours coulomb our music and
sound design is by shane turner and our
graphics team is ateliermuse
we're down in the comments below where
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and we'll see you next Wednesday Seattle