The life of every person is filled with various sounds. These are street noises , household appliances, musical and speech sounds. The meaning of the word “sound” will be interpreted from the position of acoustics. Let's start with the simplest. First of all, sound is a physical phenomenon (wave-like propagation in a gaseous, liquid and solid medium), perceived by the human ear. From musical sounds, melody and harmony are built, and speech is the simplest element of a language with characteristic properties.
Variety of sounds
It is conditionally possible to divide them into speech, musical and noise (they have a lot of subgroups and gradations). The most common are the sounds of the third group, which surround a person in everyday life (conditionally, you can distinguish the sounds of a city street, home environment, surrounding living and inanimate nature). Generally speaking, sound is what is perceived by the hearing (although some of the sounds cannot be heard due to the structural features of the hearing aid).
Parameters
The main characteristics and influence of all sounds on a person are studied by such a branch of physics as acoustics.
Since sound is the result of vibrations of elastic bodies, there are parameters for its measurement.
Frequency and speed of sound
The human hearing aid is tuned to the perception of a certain range of vibrations (16-20000 Hz). For example, the well-known tuning fork (usually produced in the form of a plug) is tuned to 440 Hz (Hertz), which corresponds to the oscillation frequency of a particular musical sound - this is the "a" of the first octave.
1 Hz is one oscillation per second. All sounds that go beyond the audible range are not distinguished by people. If this range is (conditionally) from 0 to 15 Hz, then it is called infrasound. All vibrations above 20,000 are called ultrasound.
As a physical phenomenon, sound has such a characteristic as speed, which, obeying the basic laws, depends on the nature of the propagation medium (more precisely, on its characteristics: temperature, density, pressure, state, etc.).
Wave amplitude
If the height of the sound phenomenon (high-low) depends on the number of hertz, then its volume depends on the amplitude of the oscillations. The change in amplitude is expressed in decibels. The decibel is a relative value indicating a change in the amplitude of the oscillation in the direction of increasing or decreasing (louder or quieter).
Characteristics of Speech Sounds
Sound is the smallest component of speech flow. Like music, speech is recorded using certain characters - letters. But if in music sound has four main characteristics (pitch, length, timbre and volume), then speech is divided into vowels and consonants.
The embodiment of sounds in letters was facilitated by the emergence of written speech, which is a graphic imprint of oral. The difference between vowels and consonants is their formation (or pronunciation). The former are formed with the help of a voice and when pronounced, the air stream does not encounter obstacles in its path. But the latter are formed with the help of voice and noise (resistance to air jets) or only noise. Based on the characteristics and place of sounds in words, they are classified.
Vowel sounds
Names in the classification of vowels indicate the participation in the formation of sounds of various organs of the vocal apparatus and their position during pronunciation.
So, labialized sounds differ from non-labialized sounds by the participation of lips in their formation (from Lat. Labium - lip). But the position of the language is taken into account in several ways.
The first is the position of the tongue relative to the vertical: upper, middle and lower rises. Accordingly, the language is at the top, middle and bottom. There are also front, back and middle rows. In the first case, the key role in sound production is played by the tip of the tongue, in the second - the root of the tongue (rises to the soft palate), in the third - the back of the tongue.
It is worth noting that there are 10 vowels in the Russian language, and only 6 sounds. Such a mismatch occurs due to iotated letters, which designate not one, but two sounds at once (E, E, Y, Y).
Consonants
This is Z4 sound and 23 letters (2 of them do not indicate sounds), which are divided by hardness and softness, sonorous and deaf.
The lack of consonants in the words turns the speech flow into absurdity. But with a lack of vowels, the text (at the very least) can be read, although with great difficulty.
Consonants are classified according to the same principle as vowels.
Studies at an English university
With the help of letters, the coding of oral speech in writing takes place. These are two types of activities that are closely related to each other, but have their own laws. This clearly shows the test in the form of text with incorrect letter spacing.
Many elementary school children are not able to read this text to the end and understand the meaning, since their reading process is not automated enough. But adults often notice the rearrangement of letters only at the end of the text. This ability appears after the rules of the Russian language begin to be applied "automatically" and do not cause difficulties.