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Phonetics is the study of speech sounds ( voice). It is concerned with the actual nature of the sounds and their production, as opposed to phonology, which operates at the level of sound systems and linguistic units called phonemes. Discussions of meaning ( semantics) do not enter at this level of linguistic analysis.

Phonetics has three main branches:

• articulatory phonetics, concerned with the positions and movements of the lips, tongue, and other speech organs in producing speech;
• acoustic phonetics, concerned with the properties of the sound waves; and
• auditory phonetics , concerned with speech perception.

There are several hundred different phones recognized by the International Phonetic AssociationThe International Phonetic Association (IPA) is an organization that promotes the scientific study of phonetics and the various practical applications of that science. The IPA's major contribution to the academic community is the International Phonetic Al (IPA) and transcribed in their International Phonetic AlphabetThis article is about the alphabet officially used in linguistics. The NATO phonetic alphabet ("alpha bravo") has been informally and nonstandardly called the International Phonetic Alphabet as well. The International Phonetic Alphabet is a phonetic alpha.

Of all the speech sounds that a human vocal tract can create, different languages vary considerably in the number of these sounds that they use. Languages can contain from 2 ( AbkhazAbkhaz is an agglutinative language spoken in Georgia (in autonomous republic of Abkhazia) and Turkey. Abkhaz has about 100,000 speakers in Abkhazia, with up to 500,000 more living in northeastern Turkey. It belongs to the northwest Caucasian family spoke) to 55 ( SedangThe Sedang language is an Austro-Asiatic language spoken in the Kingdom of All the Sedang and the Cong Tum Province in south central Vietnam. Sedang Spoken in: Kingdom of the Sedang Cong Tum Province VietnamEastern Laos Total speakers: 40 Thousand Ranking) vowelIn phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by an open configuration of the vocal tract, in contrast to consonants, which are characterized by a constriction or closure at one or more points along the vocal tract. The word vos and 6 ( RotokasRotokas is a language spoken in Bougainville, an island to the east of New Guinea, part of Papua New Guinea. It is part of the East Papuan language family. Its main claim to fame, linguistically speaking, is that it possesses one of the world's smallest p) to 117 ( !KungKung-ekoka ''or Xu ''or Kung as it is often spelled in English, is a Northern Khoisan language of Namibia, Angola, and Botswana. Its SIL code is KNW''. In total, it has about 5,000 speakers. It might be the same as 'Akhoe or Vasekela. It possesses no labi) consonantA consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a constriction or closure at one or more points along the vocal tract. The word consonant comes from Latin meaning "sounding with" or "sounding together", the idea being that consonants dos. The total number of phonemes in languages varies from as few as 10 in the Pirahã language, 11 in Rotokas (spoken in Papua New Guinea), 12 in Hawaiian and 30 in Serbian to as many as 141 in !Xu (spoken in southern Africa, in the Kalahari desert). These may range from familiar sounds like /t/, /s/ or /m/ to very unusual ones produced in extraordinary ways (see: clicks, phonation, airstream mechanism). The English language has about 13 vowel and 24 consonant phonemes (depending upon dialect), some of which have multiple allophones. This differs from the lay definition based on the Latin alphabet, where there are 21 consonants and 5 vowels (although sometimes y and w are included as vowels).

Phonetics was studied as early as 2500 years ago in ancient India.