Sound files from Ladefoged (2000, 2001)

The links below are to pages of sound files created by Peter Ladefoged to accompany his textbooks Vowels and Consonants (Blackwell, 2001) and A Course in Phonetics (4th ed., Harcourt Brace, 2000).

Sound files of examples from the IPA Handbook can be found at http://web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/handbook.htm.

The sounds of English

English Consonants

• Consonant phonemes of English - Examples of English consonants, mostly in the environment #_aj.
• Allophones of English stops - Voiced and voiceless stops in English, in the environments #_, #s_, and _#.
• Stops after [s] - Voiceless stops preceded by [s] are unaspirated; if you cut off the [s], they sound voiced.
• Glottal stops in Cockney - Where Canadian English usually has an alveolar tap, Cockney generally has a glottal stop.
• Word-final allophones of voiceless stops - Voiceless stops at the end of a word can be realized as released or unreleased, plain or glottalized.

English Vowels

• American English - Vowels and diphthongs of General American English, in the environment [b_d].
• British English - Vowels and diphthongs of RP, in the environment [b_d].
• American and British vowels - Vowels and diphthongs in RP and GA, in the environment [h_].
• Video - Positions of the tongue and lips for the vowels [i e a o u].

English Suprasegmentals

• Names - Intonational patterns for names spoken as questions, statements, reprimands, etc.
• Intonation contours - Intonational patterns for English sentences.
• Strong and weak forms - English function words typically have 'weak' or reduced forms when unstressed.

The sounds of the world's languages

Place of Articulation

• Ewe - Bilabial and labiodental fricatives.
• V'enen Taut - Linguolabial consonants.
• Hungarian - Palatal stops and nasals.
• Malayalam - Nasal stops at six different places of articulation.
• Polish - Alveolar, retroflex, and alveopalatal fricatives.
• Yoruba - Labial-velar double articulation.
• Agul - Pharyngeal and epiglottal consonants
• Hebrew - Uvular, pharyngeal, and glottal consonants.
• Aleut - Dental, velar, and uvular consonants.
• Hindi - Bilabial, dental, retroflex, and velar stops; palatoalveolar affricates.

Manner of Articulation

• Zulu - Lateral approximants and fricatives.
• Russian - Plain and palatalized consonants.
• Arabic - Plain and pharyngealized consonants.
• Finnish - Contrastive length on vowels and consonants.
• Icelandic - Pre-aspirated, geminate, and short stops.
• Hebrew - Trilled [r].
• Isoka - Labial fricatives and approximants.
• Malay - Long and short consonants in word-initial position.
• Kele and Titan - Prenasalized bilabial and alveolar trills.

Phonation and Airstreams

• Tsonga - Plain and breathy voiced nasals.
• Nepali - Voiceless, aspirated, voiced, and breathy voiced bilabial stops.
• Mazatec - Modal voice, creaky voice, and breathy voice
• Montana Salish - Ejective stops and affricates.
• K'ekchi - Plain and ejective velar and uvular stops.

Vowels

• Norwegian - Rounded and unrounded long vowels.
• Akan - [+ATR] and [-ATR] vowels.
• Icelandic - Short and long diphthongs.
• Turkish - Eight vowels, three contrasts: [±high], [±round], [±back].
• French - Oral and nasal vowels.
• German - Place, height, length, and rounding contrasts.

Suprasegmentals and Phonotactics

• Ibibio - High, low, and falling tones.
• Hmong - Level tones, contour tones, and tones involving changes in phonation.
• Polish - Consonant clusters.

Full IPA Chart

LIN 228 | Linguistics | Faculty of Arts and Science | University of Toronto