---
title: Phonetics & Phonology
description: This area studies the physical production of speech sounds and the cognitive systems that organize those sounds in languages. Learners will understand how speech is articulated, perceived, and structured into distinct phonological patterns.
category: social-sciences
subcategory: linguistics
difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced
url: /subject/phonetics-and-phonology
---

# Phonetics & Phonology

This area studies the physical production of speech sounds and the cognitive systems that organize those sounds in languages. Learners will understand how speech is articulated, perceived, and structured into distinct phonological patterns.

## Available Resources

5 Books • 2 Courses • 5 Websites

## Websites

### 1. Praat

Speech analysis program from the University of Amsterdam. Records and segments audio, displays waveforms, spectrograms, pitch and formant tracks, and runs scripted batch measurements, so you can measure acoustic properties of speech yourself.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/

**Tags:** praat, acoustic-phonetics, speech-analysis, spectrogram, software

### 2. IPA Chart

The International Phonetic Association's authoritative symbol chart, organised by place and manner of articulation, covering consonants, vowels, diacritics, and suprasegmentals. Use it as the reference when reading or writing phonetic transcription in any language.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/content/full-ipa-chart

**Tags:** ipa, phonetic-transcription, articulatory-phonetics, reference-chart

### 3. seeingspeech.ac.uk

Seeing Speech is an online educational resource for phonetics and phonology, offering interactive visuals that illustrate how speech sounds are produced. It includes explanations of place and manner of articulation, sample sounds, and activities to help learners identify and practice articulatory features.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://seeingspeech.ac.uk

**Tags:** websites, humanities-social-sciences, linguistics

### 4. International Phonetic Association

The official site of the International Phonetic Association, which maintains the International Phonetic Alphabet. It hosts the current IPA chart with sound files, the Journal of the IPA, handbook information and teaching resources for transcribing speech sounds accurately.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://internationalphoneticassociation.org

**Tags:** international-phonetic-alphabet, phonetics, phonetic-transcription, linguistics

### 5. phonetics.ucla.edu

The UCLA Phonetics Lab site offers educational resources on phonetics and phonology, along with information about the lab’s research, datasets, and analysis tools.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://phonetics.ucla.edu

**Tags:** websites, humanities-social-sciences, linguistics

## Books

### 1. A Course in Phonetics

**Author:** Peter Ladefoged

Standard undergraduate phonetics textbook covering articulation, transcription, acoustics, and the sounds of the world's languages. Its exercises and accompanying audio train you to hear, produce, and transcribe speech sounds in IPA with precision.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1413006884?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, linguistics

### 2. Introducing Phonetic Science

**Author:** Michael Ashby, John Maidment

Cambridge textbook that builds phonetic skills from scratch: articulatory description, transcription conventions, speech acoustics, hearing and perception, and instrumental analysis. After it you can describe and transcribe speech sounds and read basic acoustic displays.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521004969?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, linguistics

### 3. Phonology in Generative Grammar

**Author:** Michael Kenstowicz

Graduate reference that traces phonological theory after Chomsky and Halle, covering features, rules, autosegmental and metrical representations, and syllable structure, with data from many languages. Prepares you to read and evaluate primary theoretical literature.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1557864268?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, linguistics

### 4. Introducing Phonology

**Author:** David Odden

Cambridge introduction that develops phonological analysis step by step, with sixty-plus graded problem sets from a wide range of languages. Work through it and you can derive rules and underlying representations from raw data.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521534046?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, linguistics

### 5. Phonology

**Author:** Philip Carr

Short Blackwell introduction to the sound system of present-day English: the phoneme, syllable and foot, word stress, intonation, and variation across accents. Gives you a working vocabulary for describing English pronunciation.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0631197761?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, linguistics

## Courses

### 1. Conciencia Lingüística

Spanish-language course from Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana covering the language faculty, phonetics, and Spanish word formation. Students finish able to classify sounds and phonemes, analyse inflection, derivation and compounding, and describe the grammatical behaviour of each word class.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.coursera.org/learn/conciencia-lingstica

**Tags:** spanish-linguistics, phonetics, morphology, word-formation, grammar

### 2. Miracles of Human Language

Leiden University's Coursera course, taught by Marc van Oostendorp, surveys how human languages differ and what they share, with interviews of native speakers and guest linguists. Completing it gives a working grasp of phonology, morphology, syntax and language typology.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.coursera.org/learn/human-language

**Tags:** courses, humanities-social-sciences, linguistics

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