Reddit reviews A Practical Introduction to Phonetics (Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics)

These are called linguistic universals. The Universals Archive ("A Brief Introduction for Prospective Users" here) lists 2,029 proposed linguistic universals, with counterexamples included when they exist.

If you click on Browse at the top, you can browse through them one at a time or by number. But if you click Search, you can search by criteria. The two search parameters you'll probably want to use are "Domain"—phonology is sounds, morphology is word formation, syntax is sentence structure, etc.—and "Quality," where "Absolute" means that there are no exceptions, and "Statistical" means that there is a strong tendency, as with the s and z thing. If you have an idea what you're looking for, you can also type stuff into "Keywords"; and if you type a language into "Counterexamples," you'll find proposed universals that someone has claimed that language violates.

There's also a complementary database of phenomena that are found only in one or a few languages/language families, which apparently someone felt the need to name "rara." Example entry: it's extremely rare for a language to have more than two or three basic terms that primarily/fundamentally refer to types of smells, as opposed to taste terms that can also be used for smells ("sweet"), or terms that just describe something as smelling like something else. A nice Atlantic article about two languages that are exceptions to this that are not mentioned in the archive entry.

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I think the two entries in the Universals Archive that imply the rule about s and z* would be number 767...

> If a language has only one primary fricative its primary allophone is most likely to be /s/.

and number 770:

> The presence of a voiced primary fricative in a language is highly likely to imply the presence of its voiceless equivalent.

Definitions of terms:

• voiced/voiceless: This is the only one that's important if you just want to know why those quotes imply the generalization about s and z. Voiced means the vocal folds vibrate while the sound is produced; voiceless means they don't. When the definition refers to a voiced consonant's "voiceless equivalent," that means to the sound that's the same in every other respect, except that it's voiceless. This is the difference between [z] (voiced) and [s] (voiceless), and also [v] and [f], [ð] (in they) and [θ] (in thirsty), and [ʃ] (in shoe) and [ʒ] (in treasure). (If you practice alternating between the members of any of those pairs ("sssssszzzzzzsssszzzzz..."), you can teach yourself to make the voiceless versions of sounds even when they don't exist in English. If this kind of thing interests you, this is an awesome book that will teach you both the theory and practice.)
  
• fricative: these are consonants where air hisses through a narrow opening. All of the sounds listed in the previous definition are fricatives. A fricative is one of the manners of articulation; another example is stops, which are made by completely obstructing the flow of air and then (usually) releasing it again: in English, [t], [d], [p], [b], [k], [g].
  
• primary: The dimensions we've just defined, manner of articulation and voicing, are two of the three most common ways of classifying consonants. The third is place of articulation. I wasn't familiar with this use of the term "primary," but based on the comment in this entry, it seems to mean something like 'having only one place of articulation, with no extra frills, like lip-rounding.'
  
  *
  
  For something about linguistic universals that's more readable and contextualized than the Universals Archive, try this chapter or these slides. For more examples of universals**, see this Quora answer.
  
  (paging /u/ligiri who also asked about this)

Did you make this? Whoever made it, and whoever brought it to our attention here, thank you.

I've finally started to get to grips with phonetics and this animation/synthesizer is bringing it alive for me. While anyone who wants to really get good at the subject is ultimately not going to be able to get out of learning to make the various sounds themselves, for instance by following the course of exercises laid out in J Catford's A Practical Introduction to Phonetics, the trouble with doing that is it makes me feel and sound like a complete loony.

This wonderful internet gadget also makes some weird howling and hissing noises, but I can put headphones on so nobody else can hear.

I hesitate to make any criticism at all of something so awesome, but it would be nice if the teeth were pictured and the upper lip was able to descend as well as the lower lip rising. In fact it would be nice if the speaker's face was pictured - it took me a minute to realise that the diagram was facing right; for some reason most of the illustrations of human speech apparatus I have seen face left. Is there a way to make /θ/ and /ð/ that I haven't found yet? Same goes for /l/ and /r/, although I suppose they are intrinsically harder to picture on a 2D diagram.

But these are minor points. You have saved me from being carted off to the funny farm.

Find a copy of J.C. Catford's A Practical Introduction to Phonetics. The book is full of exercises which walk you through producing the sounds of the IPA. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It's been tremendously helpful to me.

I don't think it's necessary, no. But if you're the kind of person that benefits from this kind of thing, it can be beneficial. Sorry for being tautological =)

If you was about to learn new swimming styles, are you the kind of person who would go to the library and research on books about sports science as applied to swimming? If learning the guitar, do you brush up on music theory and try to understand the patterns of notes and chords in the fretboard? Before reading poetry, do you study about metrical forms and the history of styles? If you're that kind of person, you might have fun studying some linguistics and then trying to apply it to the languages you learn. Ocasionally it might even be useful!

As for book recommendations, I think one of the most useful areas you can investigate is phonetics and phonology, the study of linguistic sounds. Spoken languages are made of sounds that you hear, and you decode writing into sort-of "mental sounds" (assuming you're not congenitally deaf). Unfortunately these two processes have complications.

• Adult non-natives often fail to perceive and produce sounds in the new language (L2) that aren't present in their mother tongue (L1).
  
  Due to personal experience, I'm a supporter of the theory that this can be remedied by explicitly learning to notice the different sounds (Schmidt's Noticing Hypothesis). That means you need to understand how you yourself produce linguistic sounds, so that you can adapt your vocal gestures to those of other languages.
  
  To be able to do that, first of all, you have to learn the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). No, seriously, you need it. The Wikipedia articles are quite decent, and so is IPA's own handbook. Wikipedia also has recordings for all sounds—and so does this interactive table. Some beginners think of IPA as a writing system, and try to learn to "read" it as a whole. This is a mistake. Think of it as a table of possible sounds, classified on various dimensions (in the case of consonants, which are easier to introspect, there are three: place, manner, and voice). Once you understand how each dimension explains part of a gesture, the values of each symbol become a recipe of how to produce it: do this with my tongue here, turn on voice, and… voilà!
  
  If you're familiar with language X, look at the Wikipedia article "Phonology of X", and try to refer to the table and understand it by reproducing the sounds. (In the case of English, be sure to locate your own dialect/accent). Then try to understand the corresponding articles for the languages you're learning. You don't need to care about the rest of the table.
  
  As you get familiar with the IPA, try to learn the basics of articulatory phonetics and phonology. Online articles are probably good enough to help with language learning, but if you like technical books and want to dig deeper, I benefited a lot this and this and this one. If and only if you like physics, then this too.
  
  
• It's nontrivial to deduce the sounds from the writing (witness how much trouble computer people have with speech synthesis). All writing systems assume that you already know the language. Some assume just a little, like Finnish or Czech (and are therefore foreign-friendly); and some are basically unpredictable, like English and French; most are somewhere in-between.
  
  The best solution to this is to make sure you get lots and lots and lots of exposure to the spoken language. If you can learn the spoken language before writing, so much the better (it's how natives learn, after all). If you're curious about how writing systems work, I'd recommend Rogers as a first stop, but I think the Cree/Blackfoot sillabaries shouldn't give you any trouble.
  
  

https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Introduction-Phonetics-Textbooks-Linguistics/dp/0199246351

Do you understand the structure of IPA? Do you know what a palatal voiced stop means? Once you understand the theory of articulatory phonetics, you can make any sound perfectly with a few hours of practice maximum.

Don't mind the downvotes and unhelpful comments. Real life Scots are more friendly than this politicised subreddit suggests.

If you have time but not much money, try a two pronged strategy:

• listen to as many Scots voices as possible on TV, films, radio etc. Constantly have something Scottish on as background when you are doing something else. If you know where in Scotland the character you are playing is from, concentrate on that area. Also be aware of class differences in accent. However there are common aspects to most Scottish accents. See the Wikipedia article linked to below.
  
  
• learn about phonetics, the actual shapes of the lips and tongue etc. involved in various sounds. I recommend this book. Physically do the exercises and learn the International Phonetic Alphabet to write the sounds. This takes work but will set you up to recognise and replicate the vowels and consonants of any accent in future.
  
  When you have done that, this Wikipedia article on the phonology of Scottish English gives the main points.

How do you know spoken English without knowing the International Phonetic Alphabet? English dictionaries write their pronunciations in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

I will explain what the symbols mean.

Refer to this chart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet_chart#Pulmonic_consonants

Say the m sound in the English word him for at least 5 seconds. Block your nose with your fingers while saying the m sound. Notice that the air is blocked in the nose, if you are saying the m sound correctly. Both lips are closed for the m sound. The sound is called bilabial nasal. Refer to the chart. Notice the words Place and Manner. The place of the m sound is bilabial. That means that the sound is made with both lips. The manner of the m sound is nasal. That means that the air exits through the nose. Remember that the air was blocked while saying the m sound. That applies to all nasal sounds. Say the n sound in the English word nice while blocking your nose with your fingers. The air is blocked in the nose. Try the same with the ng sound in the English word sing. The same thing happens. The difference with the n sound is that the front part of the tongue touches the front hard part of the roof of the mouth. The difference with the ng sound is that the back part of the tongue touches the soft back part of the tongue. The difference between the sounds m and n and ng is the place of saying the sounds.

OK, we understand how the chart works. I can not explain what the symbols t and ʂ and ʰ and x are, because to teach them is difficult. You can refer to the book A practical introduction to phonetics in the link.

https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Introduction-Phonetics-Textbooks-Linguistics/dp/0199246351

The book teaches one how to produce sounds of languages by instructing how to control the organs for speaking and uses the International Phonetic Alphabet.