Practical Phonetics

For some people, the title of this course may be somewhat ambiguous, in the sense that it can also be interpreted as a course designed to help you to develop your pronunciation skills. However, the primary aim of this course is to give you some practical experience in analysing phonetic data, while – at the same time – your skills in imitating and classifying the sounds that you’ll be analysing will hopefully also improve, thereby equally helping you to achieve the former.

Course Outline

  1. Introduction to Acoustic Phonetics
  2. Sound Files & Formats
  3. Audio & Analysis Tools
  4. Waveforms & Spectrograms
  5. Identifying Vowels and Their Particular Qualities (creak, breath)
  6. Identifying Consonants and Their Particular Qualities
  7. Pauses & Transition Features (Linking, Assimilation, Elision & Glottaling)
  8. Pitch, Stress & Intensity
  9. Systematic Comparison of Speakers & Accents