Chapter 1 – Phonetics and Phonology: Understanding the Sounds of Speech

In most fields of study, language is thought of principally in terms of the written word, for it is in this form that we usually make permanent records of important ideas. Relatively little attention is spared for something as fleeting and unremarkable as spoken conversation. In linguistics, however, speech, rather than writing, is regarded as more central to human language, for several reasons. First, humans have probably used spoken languages for 100,000 years, perhaps longer. Writing is a relatively recent development, only a few thousand years old. Even today, most of the world's 5,000 or so languages have no established writing system. But there is no society which communicates just by writing, without a spoken language. Furthermore, children learn to speak long before they learn to read and write; indeed, learning of spoken language takes place without formal instruction.