Phonetics - Consonants: Crash Course Linguistics #8

The letters in a word don’t always match the sounds they represent, and people can pronounce words in different ways. Lucky for us, linguists have tools to help understand and communicate speech sounds. In this episode of Crash Course Linguistics, we’ll begin our discussion of phonetics, the study of speech sounds, by talking about consonants, and we’ll also get an introduction to the International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA.

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[LandgraabIV]

I majored in Linguistics and had a few courses on phonetics and phonology and NONE of them mentioned sign languages. Thank you for including them in your videos!

[soundlyawake]

I desperately need a video where someone’s pronouncing every single sound on the IPA chart

[ryuusei]

when I was 14 and studying for a spelling bee, I learned the IPA for English so that I could learn how words are pronounced and try to guess the spelling. I got second place.

[profoundish]

I really, really liked the "too-cluttered" diagram and how it moved with the sounds. I would definitely prefer just the chart as a reference but as a learning tool I could sit and watch that diagram make noise all day.

[thomasgoodwin]

This is the kind of education I always wanted, but never had the time or resources for. Loving every minute of it.

[danielm.]

Ah yes, English is hard; it can be understood through thorough thought though.

[adamgreenhaus]

I could go for a nice refreshing IPA brewed with Gavagai hops.

[bythebeardofmatt]

Man, talking - and just the idea of being able to do it without even really thinking about it - is remarkable when you really think of it. And this video really helps to illustrate that for me. Excellent work.

[HyTricksyy]

"In the next video, we'll look at vowels."
*sweating begins*

[talideon]

Given that this is targeted toward English speakers, I'm hoping there's a video in the future that helps people to realise the difference between an aspirated and non-aspirated sound, and how much the difference informs how they're heard in other languages.

[juliaffalcao]

Her pronunciation of Xhosa was SO satisfying

[MohammedAli-syuv]

"squishy wet meat clarinet " could be used to explain all the freaky animal noises as well

[whelanky]

Fav crash course series yet! Props for making this very clear and concise when lots of talk around language is fuzzy. It's as though you think about language very carefully or something

[vubao]

Thank you so much for explaining all these difficult-to-grasp concept in such a easy-to-understand manner. Great help to a person currently taking on a linguistic course like me :3

[superdestrier]

Just found this series in the middle of my college linguistics course. This is what I call a coincidence.

[mintcarouselchannelabandon]

along with the IPA chart i also learned to use feature matrices and we called Bilabial Labiodental Alveolar and Velar (along with the unmentioned ones, like Palatal and Uvular), just three things: Labial (anything to do with the lips) Coronal (anything to do with the tip of the tongue) and Dorsal (anything to do with the blade of the tongue.) other features include [consonant] [sonorant] [nasal] [voice] and [continuant]. some of these might not be familiar, some are.
something else useful from feature matrices is that we can describe natural classes- which are groups of phonemes with a number of the same features. phonological processes can act upon entire classes instead of just one phoneme.

[omarabdelkadereldarir]

I think this might be the most enjoyable episode of cc linguistics yet! The last one was close, though.

[tibethatguy]

Correction: at 8:42, you encircled the labiodental approximant, not the flap.

[imaginecloudsxo]

I just had lectures on Phonetics and it is honestly so interesting. However, I suck so hard at transcribing lol. :(.. Anyway, sending bilabial clicks to those who read this haha

[lcrjones]

I appreciate the inclusion of Pizza John
Thank you