Acoustics is the branch of physics that deals with the study of all mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including topics such as vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician while someone working in the field of acoustics technology may be called an acoustical engineer. The application of acoustics is present in almost all aspects of modern society with the most obvious being the audio and noise control industries.
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign language students and teachers, linguists, speech-language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators and translators.
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs (phones): their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory perception, and neurophysiological status. Phonology, on the other hand, is concerned with the abstract, grammatical characterization of systems of sounds or signs.
Phonology is a branch of linguistics concerned with the systematic organization of sounds in languages. It has traditionally focused largely on the study of the systems of phonemes in particular languages, but it may also cover any linguistic analysis either at a level beneath the word or at all levels of language where sound is considered to be structured for conveying linguistic meaning.
Stuttering, also known as stammering, is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words or phrases as well as involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the person who stutters is unable to produce sounds. The term stuttering is most commonly associated with involuntary sound repetition, but it also encompasses the abnormal hesitation or pausing before speech, referred to by people who stutter as blocks, and the prolongation of certain sounds, usually vowels or semivowels. According to Watkins et al., stuttering is a disorder of "selection, initiation, and execution of motor sequences necessary for fluent speech production". For many people who stutter, repetition is the primary problem. The term "stuttering" covers a wide range of severity, encompassing barely perceptible impediments that are largely cosmetic to severe symptoms that effectively prevent oral communication. In the world, approximately four times as many men as women stutter, encompassing 70 million people worldwide, or about 1% of the world's population.
The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, such as talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, etc. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound production in which the vocal folds are the primary sound source.
Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth. Alveolar consonants may be articulated with the tip of the tongue, as in English, or with the flat of the tongue just above the tip, as in French and Spanish. The laminal alveolar articulation is often mistakenly called dental, because the tip of the tongue can be seen near to or touching the teeth. However, it is the rearmost point of contact that defines the place of articulation; this is where the oral cavity ends, and it is the resonant space of the oral cavity that gives consonants and vowels their characteristics. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) does not have separate symbols for the alveolar consonants. Rather, the same symbol is used for all coronal places of articulation that are not palatalized like English palato-alveolar sh, or retroflex. To disambiguate, the bridge may be used for a dental consonant, or the under-bar may be used for the postalveolars. Note that differs from dental in that the former is a sibilant and the latter is not. differs from postalveolar in being unpalatalized. The bare letters, etc. cannot be assumed to specifically represent alveolars. The language may not make such distinctions, such that two or more coronal places of articulation are found allophonically, or the transcription may simply be too broad to distinguish dental from alveolar. If it is necessary to specify a consonant as alveolar, a diacritic from the Extended IPA may be used:, etc., though that could also mean extra-retracted. The letters ⟨s, t, n, l⟩ are frequently called 'alveolar', and the language examples below are all alveolar sounds.
Speech disorders or speech impediments are a type of communication disorder where 'normal' speech is disrupted. This can mean stuttering, lisps, etc. Someone who is unable to speak due to a speech disorder is considered mute.
Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice and augments regular speech by the use of sustained tonality, rhythm, and a variety of vocal techniques. A person who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music that can be sung with or without accompaniment by musical instruments. Singing is often done in an ensemble of musicians, such as a choir of singers or a band of instrumentalists. Singers may perform as soloists or accompanied by anything from a single instrument up to a symphony orchestra or big band. Different singing styles include art music such as opera and Chinese opera, Indian music and religious music styles such as gospel, traditional music styles, world music, jazz, blues, gazal and popular music styles such as pop, rock, electronic dance music and filmi.
The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama was founded by Elsie Fogerty in 1906 to offer a new form of training in speech and drama for young actors and other students. It became a constituent of the University of London in 2005 and its prominent alumni include Laurence Olivier, Vanessa Redgrave, Judi Dench, Harold Pinter, Martin Freeman and Kit Harington.
Voice is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds. It is also called "voicing". Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless or voiced.
Nuance is a U.S. based multinational computer software technology corporation, headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, United States on the outskirts of Boston, that provides speech recognition, and artificial intelligence. Current business products focus on server and embedded speech recognition, telephone call steering systems, automated telephone directory services, and medical transcription software and systems. The company also maintains a small division which does software and system development for military and government agencies based in Westborough, Massachusetts, allegedly called Twined.
System Preferences is an application included with the macOS operating system that allows users to modify various system settings which are divided into separate Preference Panes. The System Preferences application was introduced in the first version of Mac OS X to replace the control panel that was included in the classic Mac OS. Prior to Mac OS X, a control panel is a small application which enabled the user to modify software and hardware settings such as the sound volume and desktop pattern. Control panels differ from extensions in that they allow the user to specify options, whereas extensions provide the user with no interface for setting preferences. In many software distributions Extensions provided the functionality and the corresponding Control Panel provided all the configuration options.
The Sound Manager is a part of the classic Apple Macintosh operating system, in Classic Mac OS. It is used to control the production and manipulation of sounds on Macintosh computers. The Sound Manager is also used by other parts of the Macintosh system software that produce sounds, such as the Speech Manager and QuickTime.
A Manager was any of a set of specialized components of the classic Mac OS operating system, including those that comprised the Macintosh Toolbox. Each of these Managers was responsible for handling system calls from applications running on the Macintosh, and could be built into the ROM or be loaded into RAM by the system.
SVOPC is a compression method for audio which is used by VOIP applications. It is a lossy speech compression codec designed specifically towards communication channels suffering from packet loss. It uses more bandwidth than best bandwidth-optimised codecs, but it is packet loss resistant instead.
Speech and language impairment are basic categories that might be drawn in issues of communication involve hearing, speech, language, and fluency.
A lisp is a speech impediment in which a person misarticulates sibilants, . These misarticulations often result in unclear speech.
