Speech production - Phonetics of the English Language

Dear all,

With regard to the topic speech production I highly recommend the following link:

http://www.uiowa.edu/%7Eacadtech/phonetics/

Here the University of Iowa presents how the single sounds of the English language are produced.

At first click on articulatory anatomy and have a look at all the parts and muscles of the head that are deeply involved with speech production.

Then click on american/english (or on German, if you are interested in the phonetics of our mothertongue) and have a look at the production of the single sounds. The English language consists of about forty sounds which are introduced with very concrete examples. You can find out the different marks of each consonant and vowel, e.g. that a /v/ is a fricative, labiodental, voiced sound. Too much confusion? Don't worry, the homepage offers you step-by-step descriptions that make clear which parts in the articulatory system are used. Even little videos which show speakers, who are producing single sounds, are uploaded.

I am very fascinated by this presentation of a rather theoretical disciplin of linguistics and it really makes fun to develope how speech is produced!

You can compare this to the homepage of the International Phonetic Association http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/ipa/ipa.html

but I think that the homepage of the Univiersity of Iowa comes up to the linguist's expectations.