ORGANS OF SPEECH

The various organs which are involved in the production of speech sounds are called speech organs (also known
as vocal organs). The study of speech organs helps to determine the role of each organ in the production of speech
sounds. They include the lungs, the vocal folds, and most importantly the articulators.

1. The Lungs
The airflow is by far the most vital requirement for producing speech sound, since all speech sounds are made with some
movement of air. The lungs provide the energy source for the airflow. The lungs are the spongy respiratory organs
situated inside the rib cage. They expand and contract as we breathe in and out air. The amount of air accumulated inside
our lungs controls the pressure of the airflow.

2. The Larynx & the Vocal Folds

The larynx is colloquially known as the voice box. It is a box-like small structure situated in the front of the throat where
there is a protuberance. For this reason the larynx is popularly called the Adams apple. This casing is formed of
cartilages and muscles. It protects as well as houses the trachea (also known as windpipe, oesophagus, esophagus) and
the vocal folds (formerly they were called vocal cords). The vocal folds are like a pair of lips placed horizontally from front
to back. They are joined in the front but can be separated at the back. The opening between them is called glottis. The
glottis is considered to be in open state when the folds are apart, and when the folds are pressed together the glottis is
considered to be in close state.

The opening of the vocal folds takes different positions:

1.

Wide Apart: When the folds are wide apart they do not vibrate. The sounds produced in such position are
called breathed or voiceless sounds. For example: /p/f//s/.

2.

Narrow Glottis: If the air is passed through the glottis when it is narrowed then there is an audible friction. Such sounds are
also voiceless since the vocal folds do not vibrate. For example, in English /h/ is avoiceless glottal fricative sound.

3.

Tightly Closed: The vocal folds can be firmly pressed together so that the air cannot pass between them. Such a position
produces a glottal stop / / (also known as glottal catch, glottal plosive).

4.

Touched or Nearly Touched: The major role of the vocal folds is that of a vibrator in the production of speech. The folds vibrate
when these two are touching each other or nearly touching. The pressure of the air coming from the lungs makes them vibrate.
This vibration of the folds produces a musical note called voice. And sounds produced in such manner are
called voiced sounds. In English all the vowel soundsand the consonants /v/z/m/n/are voiced.

Thus it is clear that the main function of the vocal folds is to convert the air delivered by the lungs into audible sound. The
opening and closing process of the vocal folds manipulates the airflow to control the pitch and the tone of speech sounds.
As a result, we have different qualities of sounds.

3. The Articulators
Articulators transform the sound into intelligible speech. They can be either active or passive. They include the pharynx,
the teeth, the alveolar ridge behind them, the hard palate, the softer velum behind it, the lips, the tongue, and the nose
and its cavity. Traditionally the articulators are studied with the help of a sliced human head figure like the following:

(i) The Pharynx: The pharynx lies between the mouth and the food passage, that is, just above the larynx. It is just about
7cm long in the case of women and 8cm long in the case of men.
(ii) The Roof of the Mouth: The roof of the mouth is considered as a major speech organ. It is divided into three parts:

a. The Alveolar Ridge/Teeth Ridge: The alveolar ridge is situated immediately after the upper front teeth. The sounds
which are produced touching this convex part are calledalveolarsounds. Some alveolar sounds in English include: /t/d/.
b. The Hard Palate: The hard palate is the concave part of the roof of the mouth. It is situated on the middle part of the
roof.
c. The Velum or Soft Palate: The lower part of the roof of the mouth is called soft palate. It could be lowered or raised.
When it is lowered, the air stream from the lungs has access to the nasal cavity. When it is raised the passage to the
nasal cavity is blocked. The sounds which are produced touching this area with the back of the tongue are
called velarsounds. For example: /k/g/.
(iii) The Lips: The lips also play an important role in the matter of articulation. They can be pressed together or brought
into contact with the teeth. The consonant sounds which are articulated by touching two lips each other are
called bilabial sounds. For example, /p/ and /b/ are bilabial sounds in English. Whereas, the sounds which are produced
with lip to teeth contact are calledlabiodental sounds. In English there are two labiodental sounds: /f/ and /v/.
Another important thing about the lips is that they can take different shapes and positions. Therefore, lip-rounding is
considered as a major criterion for describing vowel sounds. The lips may have the following positions:
a. Rounded: When we pronounce a vowel, our lips can be rounded, a position where the corners of the lips are brought
towards each other and the lips are pushed forwards. And the resulting vowel from this position is a rounded one. For
example, / /.
b. Spread: The lips can be spread. In this position the lips are moved away from each other (i.e. when we smile). The
vowel that we articulate from this position is an unrounded one. For example, in English /i: /is a long vowel with slightly
spread lips.
c. Neutral: Again, the lips can be neutral, a position where the lips are not noticeably rounded or spread. And the
articulated vowel from this position is referred to as unrounded vowel. For example, in English /: / is a long vowel with
neutral lips.

(iv) The Teeth: The teeth are also very much helpful in producing various speech sounds. The sounds which are made
with the tongue touching the teeth are called dental sounds. Some examples of dental sounds in English include: ///.
(v) The Tongue: The tongue is divided into four parts:
a. The tip: It is the extreme end of the tongue.
b. The blade: It lies opposite to the alveolar ridge.
c. The front: It lies opposite to the hard palate.
d. The back: It lies opposite to the soft palate or velum.

The tongue is responsible for the production of many speech sounds, since it can move very fast to different places and is
also capable of assuming different shapes. The shape and the position of the tongue are especially crucial for the
production of vowel sounds. Thus when we describe the vowel sounds in the context of the function of the tongue, we
generally consider the following criteria:
Tongue Height: It is concerned with the vertical distance between the upper surface of the tongue and the hard palate.
From this perspective the vowels can be described as close andopen. For instance, because of the different distance
between the surface of the tongue and the roof of the mouth, the vowel /i: /has to be described as a
relatively close vowel, whereas / / has to be described as a relatively open vowel.
Tongue Frontness / Backness: It is concerned with the part of tongue between the front and the back, which is raised
high. From this point of view the vowel sounds can be classified asfront vowels and back vowels. By changing the
shape of the tongue we can produce vowels in which a different part of the tongue is the highest point. That means, a
vowel having the back of the tongue as the highest point is a back vowel, whereas the one having the front of the tongue
as the highest point is called a front vowel. For example: during the articulation of the vowel / u: / the back of the tongue is
raised high, so its a back vowel. On the other hand, during the articulation of the vowel / / the front of the tongue is
raise high, therefore, its afront vowel.

(vi) The Jaws: Some phoneticians consider the jaws as articulators, since we move the lower jaw a lot at the time of
speaking. But it should be noted that the jaws are not articulators in the same way as the others. The main reason is that
they are incapable of making contact with other articulators by themselves.
(vii) The Nose and the Nasal Cavity: The nose and its cavity may also be considered as speech organs. The sounds
which are produced with the nose are called nasal sounds. Some nasal sounds in English include: /m/n//.

General Indian English

Most Indians who learn English learn their own Indian Language before they are exposed to
English. In other words, they have in them very strong formal linguistic habits when they attempt
to learn English and these linguistic habits are bound to interfere with their learning English.
Many Indians use voiced labio-dental approximant [v] in place of /v/ and /w/ which occur in
English. Apart from these features, there are strong regional features in the English spoken by
Indians and these are a direct influence of the regional languages they belong to.
The result is that these and other such gross regional features render the English speech of
Indians unintelligible even to fellow Indian. There are indeed, many varieties of English spoken in
India. Such as Tamil English, Telugu English, Kannada English, Urdu English, Punjabi English etc.
If we analyze some of the varieties of Indian English listed above, we will no doubt find certain
common phonological features. If we put the common phonological features of several varieties
of Indian English and remove from each variety certain gross regional features, a variety of
English will emerge which can be called General Indian English.

Indian accents vary greatly. Some Indians speak English with an accent very close to a Standard British or
Received Pronunciation accent; others lean toward a more 'vernacular', native-tinted, accent for their English
speech. Here we discuss it in detail

Vowels
Among the distinctive features of the vowel-sounds employed by some Indian English speakers are as follows:

Many Indian languages do not natively possess a separate phoneme // (as in <trap>). Thus, many
speakers do not differentiate between the vowel sounds // (as in "dress") and // (as in <trap>). Such a
speaker might pronounce "tax" like the first syllable of "Texas".
When a long vowel is followed by "r", some speakers of Indian English usually use a monophthong,
instead of the diphthong used for many such words in many other accents. Thus "fear" is pronounced
[fir] instead of [fi].

Indian English often uses strong vowels where other accents would have unstressed syllables or words.
Thus "cottage" may be pronounced [kted] rather than [ktd].

The indefinite article <a> is often pronounced by many Indian English speakers as [e ], irrespective of
whether it is stressed or unstressed. In native varieties of English, <a> is pronounced as [] when
unstressed and as [e] when stressed.

Many Indian English speakers do not make a clear distinction between // and //. (See cotcaught
merger.)

Consonants
Among the most distinctive features of consonants in Indian English are:

Standard Hindi and most other vernaculars (except Punjabi & Bengali) do not differentiate between /v/
(voiced labiodental fricative) and /w/ (voiced labiovelar approximant). Instead, many Indians use a
frictionless labio-dental approximant [] for words with either sound. So wet and vet are homophones.[2]
The voiceless plosives /p/, /t/, /k/ are always unaspirated in Indian English, whereas in RP, General
American and most other English accents they are aspirated in word-initial or stressed syllables. Thus
"pin" is pronounced [pn] in Indian English but [pn] in most other accents.

All major native languages of India lack the dental fricatives (// and //; spelled with th). Usually, the
aspirated voiceless dental plosive [t] is substituted for // and the unaspirated voiced dental plosive [d]
is substituted for //.[6] For example, "thin" would be realized as [tn] instead of /n/.

South Indians tend to curl the tongue more for /l/ and /n/.

Sometimes, Indian speakers interchange /s/ and /z/, especially when plurals are being formed.

Again, in dialects like Bhojpuri, all instances of // are spoken like [s], a phenomenon which is also
apparent in their English. Exactly the opposite is seen for many Bengalis.

While retaining // in the final position, Indian speakers usually include the [] after it. Hence /ri.i/
/ri.i/ (ringing).

Spelling pronunciation
A number of distinctive features of Indian English are due to "the vagaries of English spelling". Most Indian
languages have a very phonetic pronunciation with respect to their script, and the spelling of a word is a highly
reliable guide to its modern pronunciation. But in English, the pronunciation of a word is not determined by its
spellings. However, the speakers of GIE carry their experience learnt while learning their mother tongues into
the pronunciation of English and this results in variation. Some of these are as follows:

The word "of" is usually pronounced with a /f/ instead of a /v/ as in most other accents.
There is the use of [d] instead of [t] for the "-ed" ending of the past tense after voiceless consonants, for
example "developed" may be [dlpd] instead of RP /dvlpt/.

In RP, /r/ occurs only before a vowel. But many speakers of Indian English use /r/ in almost all positions
in words as dictated by the spellings

Vocabulary and colloquialisms

While Indian English is historically derived from British English, recent influences from American English can
be found to have created its own vocabulary. For instance, both "program" and "programme" can be found in
Indian newspapers. Indians also continue to use phrases from British English that other English speakers now
consider antiquated. For instance, official letters include phrases such as "please do the needful" and "you will
be intimated shortly". Some other words common in GIE are as follows:

Rubber - Pencil eraser

Flat - 'Apartment' / 'Apartment house'

pants - 'Trousers'

Mess - A dining hall,

Where do you stay? is the same as 'Where do you live?' or 'Where's your house?'.

"Out of station": "out of town". This phrase has its origins in the posting of army officers to particular
'stations' during the days of the East India Company.

"on the anvil" is used often in the Indian press to mean something is about to appear or happen. For
example, a headline might read "New roads on the anvil".

Cooling glasses - Sunglasses

"cent per cent" - "100 per cent" as in "He got cent per cent in maths".

"loose motion" - diarrhoea

Use of ji for strangers or anyone who is to be respected as in "Please call a taxi for Goyal-ji" (North,
West and East India)

Use of prefixes "Shree"/"Shri" or "Shreemati"/"Shrimati" (meaning Ms/Mrs): Shri Ravindra Patel or

Shreemati Das Gupta. "Shreemati"/"Shrimati" is used for married women. "Kumari" (literally meaning a
virgin) can be used for unmarried women or girls.

Use of suffixes "Saahib/Shab" (Mr) and "Begum" (Mrs) as in "Welcome to India, Smith-saahib" or
"Begum Sahib would like some tea".

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

The IPA was first published in 1888 by International Phonetic Association, a group of French language teachers
founded by Paul Passy. The aim of the organization was to devise a system for transcribing the sounds of speech
which was independent of any particular language and applicable to all languages.
A phonetic script for English created in 1847 by Isaac Pitman and Henry Ellis was used as a model for the IPA.
Uses

The IPA is used in dictionaries to indicate the pronunciation of words.

The IPA has often been used as a basis for creating new writing systems for previously unwritten
languages.

It is also used by non-native speakers of English when learning to speak English.

Sounds in English
According to IPA, in English speech system, there are 44 sounds. Out of these, 20 are vowel sounds and the
remaining 24 are consonants. Vowel sounds are further sub-divided into two types pure vowels or
monopthongs, which are twelve in number and dipthongs, which are eight in number. Below we discuss these
sounds:
CONSONANT Sounds
A consonant sound is one in the pronunciation of which two speech organs either make a complete contact or
come sufficiently closer to each-other. In the pronunciation of plosive sounds, two speech organs make a
complete contact; as a result, the air coming out of the lungs is stopped somewhere in the mouth and when this
contact comes to end, it comes out suddenly as in /p/ and /t/. Further, in the pronunciation of fricative sounds,
the two speech organs come sufficiently closer to each-other; as a result, the air passage becomes narrow and
the air comes out with a kind of friction as in like /f/ and /v/. Next, affricate is a composite speech sound

consisting of a plosive or a stop and a fricative articulated at the same point. In other words, an affricate sound
begins like a plosive and ends like a fricative. Further, in the pronunciation of nasal sounds, the air passage in
the mouth gets blocked either by two lips or by front part of the tongue and the alveolar ridge or by back part of
the tongue and the roof of the mouth; as a result, the air comes out through the nasal passage as in /m/ and /n/.
And then, approximants are speech sounds that involve the speech organs approaching each other but not
narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall
between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no turbulence. This
class of sounds includes lateral approximants like [l] as in less, non-lateral approximants like r (as in rest),
and semivowels like [j] and [w] as in yes and west, respectively. Before Peter Ladefoged coined the term
"approximant" in the 1960s the term "frictionless continuant" referred to non-lateral approximants. Finally,
a lateral is a consonant in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue
from going through the middle of the mouth. English has one lateral phoneme: the lateral approximant /l/,
which in many accents has two allophones. One, found before vowels as in lady, is called clear lateral. The
other variant is called dark lateral and is found before consonants or at the word final position as in bold or tell.

Bilabial
Plosive

LabioDental

Dental

p b

Fricative

f v

Alveolar PostAlveolar
t d
s

Approximant

Glottal

g
h

t d

Affricate
Nasal

Palatal Velar

n
w

Lateral

Here it is to be noticed that the horizontal line in this chart signifies the point of articulation of these sounds,
whereas the vertical one denotes their manner of articulation. For instance, in the pronunciation of p sound, the
point of articulation is lips, while it is articulated in such a way that while articulating it first the air gets stopped
and then suddenly released with a kind of explosion. Further, wherever in the chart symbols appear in pairs, the
first one is voiceless or lenis and the other one is voiced or fortis. Voiced or fortis consonants are those that are
produced with greater energy so much so that the vocal cords vibrate during their articulation. While in the
articulation of voiceless or lenis consonants, vocal cords do not vibrate as they are produced with lesser energy.
Symbols

Description

Phonetic Transcription

voiceless bilabial plosive

Pit /pit/

voiced bilabial plosive

Bit /bit/

voiceless alveolar plosive

voiced alveolar plosive

voiceless velar plosive

voiced velar plosive

voiceless labio-dental fricative

voiced labio-dental fricative

voiceless dental fricative

voiced dental fricative

voiceless alveolar fricative

voiced alveolar fricative

voiceless post-alveolar fricative

voiced post- alveolar fricative

voiceless post-alveolar affricate

voiced post-alveolar affricate

voiced bilabial nasal

voiced alveolar nasal

voiced velar nasal

voiced labio-dental approximant

voiced alveolar approximant

voiced palatal approximant

voiced alveolar lateral

Vowel sounds
A vowel sound is one in the pronunciation of which two speech organs neither make a complete contact nor
come sufficiently closer to each-other. As a result, the air-passage neither gets blocked nor becomes narrow and
the air comes out of the mouth without any obstruction or friction. In R.P. English, there are twenty vowels
divided into two types pure vowels and dipthongs.
A pure vowel is a monophthong. Its articulation remains relatively fixed both at the beginning and the
end as it does not glide up or down from one vowel sound to another. In IPA chart, a pure vowel is represented
by a single sign. In R.P. English, there are twelve pure vowels.
IPA Phonetic Symbol

Example
tree, sea, seat, east
bit, sit, ink, ill, it

cat, rat, bat, mat

Arm, ask, calm, car, father

All, call, ought, awful, saw
Cook, book, look, took, put, foot, could,
Spoon, shook, food, fool, rule, shoes, true, crew,
up, other, but, couple, blood, love

Pearl, yearn, girl, her, turn

until, about, ago, along
bed, head, said, get, set, bell
rock, lock,

A diphthong, also known as a gliding vowel, involves a glide up or down from one vowel sound to
another because it stands for two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. In IPA chart, a
diphthong is represented by a double sign. Diphthongs often form when separate vowels are run together in
rapid speech during a conversation. In R.P. English, there are eight diphthongs.
IPA Phonetic Symbol

Example

tray, play, eight, make, sail, say, great, ace

sky, I, eye, buy, by, rye, die
joy, boy, coin, oyster
fear, beer, here
hair, care, there,
tour, poor
cow, how, now

Know, joke, coat,