GE2128 - The Sounds of the World’s Languages

This course brings awareness to students the richness of human speech sounds through (i) demonstrations of a wide variety of the sounds of the world’s languages and (ii) descriptions of the articulatory, physiological, acoustical, and linguistic characteristics of speech sounds. Students are taught to use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) for transcribing the sounds of the languages. Students participate in the learning activities, such as (i) oral and listening practice of the sounds of different languages, (ii) transcription of the sounds using the IPA symbols, (iii) carrying out simple acoustic analysis of speech sounds, and (iv) viewing of the video clips of articulation mechanisms and examining the models of the structures of the vocal tract and larynx for speech production.