What is Phonetics?

            Phonetics is come from Greek word 'phono.' It means sound, voice. It is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech. In other words, the general study of the characteristics of speech sounds is called phonetics. To describe speech sounds it is necessary to know what an individual sound is and how each sound differs from all others.

                                                                         

Phonetics studies the medium of spoken language. Now, phonetics is a pure science which studies speech process, including the anatomy, neurology and pathology of speech. The phonetics part consists of the three phases of the speech communication channel, namely the production, acoustics, and perception of speech. Although the most important phenomena are listed as key words under only one topic each, they can be seen from several different viewpoints. Due to the fact that the focus is on processing acoustic data in the language and speech area, speech acoustics is given greater prominence. So we can say the phonetics is

• how they are produced and which articulators ate take part in producing particular speech sounds.
• how they are transmitted through the air from the speaker to the listener and
• how they are received and perceived by dint of his or her auditory ability.

Briefly, phonetics is a science of speech sounds, which studies their production, transmission and reception in an impartial and practical manner, even in laboratory.