Express the production of speech sound in the pronunciation of English language.
Production of speech sound
The air from the lungs passes through the windpipe then passing through the larynx, then through the pharynx then it arrives mouth cavity. Here the air escapes into the atmosphere and sound is made.
The organs of speech:
1. The vocal cords: The larynx contains two small bands of elastic tissue, which can be thought of as flat trips of rubber, lying opposite each other across the air passage. These are the vocal cords. When the vocal cords are brought together tightly, no air can pass through them, when the air-stream is forced between them, they vibrate and produce sound. When they are apart, the air-stream passes between them freely so they don’t vibrate and produce no sound.
2. Alveolar ridge: is between the top front teeth and the hard palate. Its surface is really much rougher than it feels and covered with little ridges.
3. Hard palate: (the roof of mouth). It is the position between the alveolar ridge and soft palate. The hard palate is the highest part of the palate.
4. Soft palate: When the tongue-tip is as far back as it go away from your teeth, you will notice that the palate becomes soft, that is soft palate.
5. The pharynx: is a tube which begins just above the larynx, it is about seven centimeters long in women and about eight centimeters in men and is divided into two parts, one part being back of the mouth and the other being the beginning of the way through nasal cavity.
6. The teeth: (upper and lower), only at the front of the mouth, immediately behind the lips.
7. Tongue: it is the most important of organs of speech because it has the greatest varieties movement and shapes. It is useful to divide into these parts: tip – blade – front – back – root
8. The lips: are important in speech. They can be pressed together (when we pronounce the p b m) brought into contact with the teeth as in (f v) or rounded to produce the lip-shape for vowels like /u:/, /u/ sounds in which the lips are in contact with each other are called bilabial while those with lip-to-teeth contact are called labiodentals.
9. Nasal cavity and nose./.