speech sound
Spoken language atom
A speech sound is a distinct unit of sound produced by the human vocal apparatus when speaking.
Languages break the continuous stream of speech into these discrete sounds—consonants and vowels—that combine to form words.
The 'th' in 'think' is a speech sound that many non-native English speakers find difficult to produce.
- consonantIn agreement with
- voicingExpressing aloud
- manner of articulationHow airflow shapes speech
- pitchFrequency of sound
- nasalOf the nose
plosive · formant · tone · phoneme · diphthong · allophone · vowel · glide · whisper · lateral · spectrogram · coda · phonetics · murmur · hum · vocal cords · lips · babble
- phoneticsphonemes, phoneme, vocal folds, consonants, vowels
presence vs. absence of vocal articulation
speech soundsilence
Total lack of sound
muteness · soundlessness · speechlessness · voicelessness · quiet
linguistic vs. non-linguistic sound
speech soundnoise
Unwanted auditory disturbance
ambient noise · white noise · static · grunt · cough