This is one cool tool. Four different departments at the University of Iowa got together and came up with this neat flash animation, which shows the articulation of sounds in Spanish, English and German. Sounds are classified according to manner of articulation, place of articulation and voicing, and each one has an animated step by step description, along with several audio examples. Raising and falling diphthongs are included between vowels, along with semivowels. They even added an oral anatomy chart! Beautiful!
This will prove extremely useful when you find yourself without a clue as how to articulate a certain sound. But it’s also a nice way to get an overview of the phonetic system as a whole. Try browsing through the categories, see which sounds you already knew and which ones you never thought existed. Try checking how many /n/ sounds there are, probably more than you thought (4 times more, most probably; check out the /l/ while you’re at it).
There are a couple of points I don’t agree with, but that’s just how phonologists are, everybody’s got an opinion of their own. It’s all sounds after all, and there is hardly one unique way to articulate a sound. Also, you may find some terms with different names in some books, like the espirantes; according to the author, they may be called fricative, espirantes, expiradas or even semivowels. That’s not our concern anyway, but do check those out, as that kind of sound does not exist in English.
Something else I don’t like is that it’s almost impossible to get to the page from the University’s homepage, they really should put it out in the open. This post is my tiny bit of help to get this Phonetic Library the attention it deserves. Try it out, do you think it’s useful?
This will prove extremely useful when you find yourself without a clue as how to articulate a certain sound. But it’s also a nice way to get an overview of the phonetic system as a whole. Try browsing through the categories, see which sounds you already knew and which ones you never thought existed. Try checking how many /n/ sounds there are, probably more than you thought (4 times more, most probably; check out the /l/ while you’re at it).
There are a couple of points I don’t agree with, but that’s just how phonologists are, everybody’s got an opinion of their own. It’s all sounds after all, and there is hardly one unique way to articulate a sound. Also, you may find some terms with different names in some books, like the espirantes; according to the author, they may be called fricative, espirantes, expiradas or even semivowels. That’s not our concern anyway, but do check those out, as that kind of sound does not exist in English.
Something else I don’t like is that it’s almost impossible to get to the page from the University’s homepage, they really should put it out in the open. This post is my tiny bit of help to get this Phonetic Library the attention it deserves. Try it out, do you think it’s useful?
I’ve added a poll, you will find it on the sidebar. It would be great to know which subjects interest you the most, so please, feel free to click your opinions away.
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