The International Phonetic Alphabet: one sound for each symbol, and one symbol for each sound, except for the sounds we can't make. Written with Gretchen McCulloch and Molly Ruhl. References: - ...

Scientists have found that a portion of the brain that handles decision-making also helps decipher different sounds. A front portion of the brain that handles tasks like decision-making also helps ...

In a Lingua Franca post a few weeks ago, I needed to use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to represent the different pronunciations of the English word People still talk about speech sounds ...

We learn about 6 vowel letters and the numerous sounds we make when using them. In English, we have 5 (well, sometimes 6) vowel letters, but way more vowel sounds. That’s where the IPA can help us! We ...

Speech perception requires the rapid and effortless extraction of meaningful phonetic information from a highly variable acoustic signal. A powerful example of this phenomenon is categorical speech ...