PHONETICS

Phonetics is the study of human sound in general without saying what function which sounds  may have in a particular language. The term ‘phonetics’ is, however, often used with reference to one languagewhen the emphasis is on the pronounciation of this language. For instance, a book on the phonetics of Irish  would be about how to pronounce Irish correctly and not neccessarily about the function which the sound may have in the phonologycal system of the language. 

            It is customary to divide the field of phonetics into three branches as follows .

1.                    Articulatory phonetics              (emission of sound)

2.                    Acoustic phonetics                  (tranmission of sound)

3.                   Auditive phonetics                  (reception of sound)

Phone this is the smallest unit of human sound which is recognisable but not classified . yhe delimiters used are square brackets , example : p, i, t, all three of which are found in peat. Phones are unclassified in that nothing is said of their function in the sound system of a language. They are thus different from all phones.

    Phoneme the smallest unit of language which distinguishes meaning organisational unit of phonology is termed a phoneme . the brackets used are slashes , example from english are : /k/, /u:/, /l/, as seen in the word cool /ku:l/. Both consonants and vowels are phonemes, for instance /i:/, /u:/, /au/