Sounds & Pronunciation

Discover why languages can sound so different from one another.

About Sounds & Pronunciation

Human speech uses a huge range of sounds created by the lungs, larynx, tongue, lips, teeth, palate, and nasal passages. Languages select different subsets of these possible sounds and organize them into systems.

Visual learning: These pages use real artifact photographs, inscriptions, sign-language references, and writing-system images from Wikimedia Commons. Final image URLs should be browser-tested.

Rosetta Stone — Rosetta StoneThe Rosetta Stone preserves the same decree in multiple writing systems and helped scholars decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Ancient Inscription — Ancient InscriptionWritten inscriptions give linguists direct evidence about earlier languages.

Sign Language — Sign LanguageSign languages use hands, face, body, and space as full natural languages.

World Writing — World WritingHuman societies developed many scripts to record language.

Vowels

Vowels are shaped mainly by tongue position and lip shape while air flows relatively freely.

Consonants

Consonants involve narrower constrictions in the vocal tract.

Voicing

Voicing describes whether the vocal folds vibrate during a sound.

Tone

Some languages use pitch differences to distinguish word meaning.

Stress

Stress makes one syllable more prominent.

Accent

An accent is a pattern of pronunciation.

International Phonetic Alphabet

The IPA gives linguists a standardized way to write speech sounds.

Sound Change

Pronunciation changes over generations.

Vowels

Languages differ in how many vowel contrasts they use.

Consonants

Stops, fricatives, nasals, liquids, affricates, clicks, and other types use different articulations.

Voicing

English contrasts voiced b with voiceless p, and d with t.

Tone

Mandarin Chinese, Yoruba, Vietnamese, and many other languages are tonal.

Stress

Changing stress can sometimes change word meaning or grammatical category.

Accent

Everyone has an accent. Accents reflect region, community, language background, age, and identity.

International Phonetic Alphabet

Its symbols describe pronunciation more precisely than ordinary spelling.

Sound Change

Systematic sound shifts help linguists reconstruct earlier stages of languages.