Phonetics

How the Deaf Read Lips: A Feat of Phonetics

Contrary to Hollywood depictions, lip-reading is less like a superpower and more like a high-stakes puzzle with most of the…

6 hours ago

The Failed Phoneme: When a Sound Dies at Birth

Ever wonder why you can say 'cheese' with ease but stumble over the 'ch' in the Scottish 'loch'? This isn't…

6 hours ago

The Speech of Sleep: Is Somniloquy a Language?

Ever wondered if the mumbles and groans of a sleep-talker are just random noise? We take a linguistic deep dive…

6 hours ago

AI’s Tone Shift: The Linguistics

The startlingly human new AI voices are more than a programming feat; they represent a breakthrough in computational prosody. Linguistics…

7 days ago

Hmong’s Tonal Writing System

Discover the Romanized Popular Alphabet (RPA), the ingenious writing system for the Hmong language. In this linguistic deep-dive, you'll learn…

7 days ago

Tone vs. Intonation Explained

Ever wondered why saying 'mā' in Mandarin can mean 'mother' while 'mǎ' means 'horse'? Or how the exact same words,…

7 days ago

The Hyperforeignism Trap

Ever wondered why some people say "mojito" with a French 'zh' sound or put on a fake accent for "foyer"?…

1 week ago

The Glottal Stop’s Secret Life in English

Think the glottal stop is just for Cockney accents? Think again. This unwritten consonant is hiding in plain sight in…

1 week ago

Why Are Slavic Languages So Beautiful?

From the soft, melodic whispers of palatalized consonants to the poetic freedom of its grammar, the beauty of Slavic languages…

1 week ago

The Unmoved Lip: Phonetics of Ventriloquism

The magic of ventriloquism isn't just misdirection; it's a masterclass in applied phonetics. Performers overcome the challenge of lip-based sounds…

1 week ago

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