In Unit 1, you learned about the physics and physiology of speech. You also learned the various ways in which consonants and vowels are classified based on articulatory properties. Now that you understand how the human body actually produces the consonant and vowel sounds that make up language, we will learn more about the sounds themselves. For this unit, you will need to learn and memorize the sounds of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The IPA contains all sounds that exist in human language.

• The LSP web site contains an interactive consonant IPA chart that allows you to hear the sounds by clicking on their corresponding symbols. There are several important things to note regarding the consonant chart:
  

• Notice that the manners of articulation are labeled across the top of the chart while the places of articulation are labeled down the left side of the chart.
  

• Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a voiced consonant.
  

• Not all of the sounds have corresponding sound clips. This is because some of the sounds are difficult for English speakers to make because they don’t exist in our language. On the IPA page, you can click on a link to see a chart with only the consonant sounds of English. Note that English has no uvular, retroflex, or pharyngeal sounds.
  

• You will also find a vowel chart with written words that illustrate the sounds plus sample vowel charts of people with different dialects. There are several important things to note regarding the vowel chart:
  

• In the introductory section of Unit 1, I pointed out that all human bust representations throughout the readings faced to the left. If you look at the way the vowel chart is situated, you will understand why that is. The vowel symbols in the IPA chart represent where in the human mouth their corresponding sounds are formed. Across the top of the chart, you will see the labels "front," "central," and "back." Front is the left most label because it corresponds with the front of a left-facing human model’s mouth. So you can imagine the chart as being superimposed on the mouth of the human bust representations in lesson 1.
  

• Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel.
  

On the IPA page of the LSP web site, open each of the sample speakers’ vowel charts and move them so that they are next to the standard vowel chart. (There are 3: a male from Texas/Georgia, a female from San Francisco, and a male from Pennsylvania/Arizona). You will notice that on the charts of sample speakers, the placement of their vowels in relation to each other is different than on the standard IPA vowel chart. This is because of variations in dialect. The standard IPA vowel chart is an approximation of each vowel sound. As you will see from looking at the charts of actual speakers, the reality of human vowel sounds is much more variable.

• The IPA page of the LSP web site.

Click on the consonant sounds to learn them and study the key words associated with the vowel sounds. Also listen to the vowel sounds of the 3 sample speakers and compare/contrast their vowel formations with those of the standard IPA chart.

IPA Section of the LSP web site:

• Standard American English I exercise on the LSP web site
  
• Standard American English II exercise on the LSP web site
  
• IPA practice test on the LSP web site
  

Do these exercises until you feel comfortable identifying each symbol with its corresponding sound.