How Do We Change Our Mouths to Shape Waves? Formants

How do we create different kinds of sound waves when we only have one mouth? What properties do those speech waves have? In this week's episode, we talk about resonance and formants: how different parts of a speech wave can get amplified, how that relates to how we talk, and how the sounds of vowels are influenced by our tongue and lip setups.
This is Topic #46!
This week's tag language: Samoan!
Other of our phonetics videos:
Vowel Movements: • Vowels and the IPA
The Periodic Table of Speech Sounds: • The International Phon...
Uncommon Sounds: • Non-Pulmonic Consonant...
The Virtual Linguistics Campus has a good look at in more detail at the technical aspects here:
• PHO120 - Sound Waves
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And at our website, www.thelingspa... !
You can also find our store at the website, www.thelingspa...
Our website also has extra content about this week's topic at www.thelingspa...
(Although not until later this week - still need to finish this up while traveling)
We also have forums to discuss this episode, and linguistics more generally.
Sources:
I'm away from my books at the moment, but the details for this video were taken from Ken Stevens' Acoustic Phonetics and Henry Rogers' The Sounds of Language.
Looking forward to next week!

[@CeliaRebelDiva]

I want to hug you right now. This is the clearest explanation of this I’ve seen yet. Thank you!!!

[@UpNfamish2]

Very good explanation without going deep in physics

[@bach63139]

Your videos are great! I don't know how I'd get through my Speech and Voice Science class without them... Thank you!!

[@KevinFlowersJr]

Kegan Deboheme often mentions formants as important to learning how to sing much higher. Thanks to this video, I now see why they matter and how they've guided his choices in vowel modifications. Much appreciated! 🙏

[@jocelynchristinamarzan9436]

Thank you. Great supplement for my acoustic phonetics class, especially the clarification regarding changes in F1 associated with length of the distance between the vocal folds and the "top" of the tongue.

[@zuzanadadova423]

Oh, so happy to have found you. I am doing a PhD thesis on phonetics and this helps me understand basic facts since I have no-one to explain spectrogram work to me. Thank you! Great job!

[@wenyichu3486]

This is super helpful! I was reading a paper on phonological perception and couldn't find a better explanation on formants than yours:) I also quite like the quick review you pulled up at the end. Thank you!

[@ucaneriste7497]

Well explained. Glad to meet this splendid channel.

[@thelingspace]

Thanks so much for joining us! Glad you liked it. ^_^

[@SpeechyTx]

This totally helping me study for the Praxis in SLP! Thank you!

[@thelingspace]

+SLP-CSD Great! Glad to be able to help there. ^_^

[@BarryPennock]

By far the best explanation of formants for beginners but you should slow down. As Chrisyl the Missile says, at 0,75 it is easier to understand.

[@stefanie369]

I have to say I find your videos very helpful! I learnt about this topic weeks ago, but since there are also other subjects I have to focus on in my studies, I nearly forgot everything. Your videos are helping me remember and understanding everything better, haha! I have one question tho! Will there be a video where you cover all the -let's say- mathematical stuff about speech analysis?? Like, I have never been good at maths so following my prof doing all his calculations has been difficult :'D

[@patpatngx]

Studying Fant's model and formant frequency for the upcoming midterm. Thank you so much for explaining these so clearly with nice examples! (I always wind up watching your videos in midterm seasons)

[@GregorMattedi]

Pretty cool ... I always wondered how we can pronounce so many different sounds with spaces like mouth and throat

[@thelingspace]

+Mattedi, Julia Yeah! It's really amazing when you think about it. We're super versatile. ^_^

[@bonbonpony]

This is not true. The pitch of the voice is not changed by the motion of the tongue inside the vocal tract (the analogy with the bottle is inappropriate in this place), but due to the changes in tension of the vocal folds. There are muscles in the glottis which can contract or release and reposition the little bones which stretch or unstretch the vocal folds. The more stretched they are (more tension), the higher-pitched sound they produce in the same air under the same air pressure and the same shape & length of the vocal tract. The changes in the shape of the vocal tract (e.g. with the tongue) are responsible for something else: they work like a resonant cavity which can filter out certain frequencies from the spectrum produced by the vocal folds. When they filter out the higher harmonics and there are only the lower ones around the base tone, you will hear an "oo" sound. If the shape of the resonant cavity filters out the medium band, the "ah" sound comes out. When there's a lot of high harmonics but not so much of low harmonics, you hear the "ee" sound, etc.

[@etantao]

Very helpful and clear explanation!

[@robert_wigh]

Your [y]:s are getting better! Keep up the good work! Thank you very much for this video. Funny when physics and linguistics co-operate in such an obvious way!

[@thelingspace]

Thanks! I do try. You'd figure with all the French here, I'd do better with the [y], and yet. ^^; But yeah, the physics of speech is really interesting. We've already done the fricative and plosive phonetics in another video, but I'm looking forward to covering more of this (and also overlaps between music and language processing, which I've been meaning to do for a while).

[@lexsarrasin713]

Very good explanation, I really wish you would also show how the American R is made and where this new F3 frequency comes from. A third chamber??? where?

[@gendalfgray7889]

Excellent video 👏👏👏

[@SunriseRabbit]

Love this video!!🎉music at the end is too loud to hear the speech though 😊

[@dolphinMOV]

Great channel! Well-organized information, thank you!

[@lindsaybaron9368]

This man is literally saving me for my CMD final

[@thelingspace]

Thanks so much! Always glad to hear that kind of thing. ^_^

[@valouroxx]

If only you released that video a little bit ealrier, I could have gotten a better grade on my exam. I'm sure I'll get a good grade though, but still. Awesome channel by the way.

[@thelingspace]

+Valentin Vrielynck Thanks! Sorry about the timing, but glad you're liking the videos. ^_^

[@jelee3656]

Hey I cannot find the extra content on the website!! I would love to read more about it. Will you please let me know where I can find more info on your website? Thank you for this awesome video!!

[@rhubarb4601]

I've enjoyed this episode. Your voice tone brings my mind to an alpha state. Brilliant. Thank you for your videos.

[@thelingspace]

Thanks! Glad you like the videos, and that my voice agrees with your mind. ^_^

[@coreylevinson7339]

fascinating..you dont really notice the shift in position of tongue from "eee" to "ooo" & you especially dont notice the lips curling. That's really great. I wonder if you lose all of your teeth, does the frequency of your vowels go lower, since you have more space for the sound to get out?

[@thelingspace]

+Corey Levinson Yeah, not huge changes in the way we articulate actually can cause big differences in the sounds we produce! And that's an interesting question, about the teeth. I'm not aware of any research that's looked at this specifically, but there probably would be a variety of differences. Teeth actually provide more stabilization than you think, as well, for these sounds: we used them to help brace our lips for different sounds. And without teeth, the shape of your oral cavity would also be different, more closed. It might be hard to find a group to study this with, but if it's out there, it'd be really interesting to look at! ^_^

[@abhishek_sengupta]

amazing explanation ❤️❤️

[@michellenapier4993]

I love all these videos!

[@JamesHUN]

man you need a shoulder massage so bad! cool vid!

[@antonshcheklein532]

Thank you, pal

[@luciadelviso9342]

Thank you so much, but slow down a bit, please! Thank you for all your effort!

[@pksferdinandd8227]

thanks a lot! what about other formants like the tip of the tongue or the twang, how does that work? How many formants are there in total?

[@reptarhouse]

Thank you for this amazing content. I just thought I'd let you know that when I click on the link for the extra material for episode 46 it sends me to an error page on your website. And when I go to your website and click on episode 46 it sends me directly to youtube.

[@tinakleven1530]

Hey! Great video! Do you know what is the source of your statement that we generally only need the first and second formant to discriminate a vocal? Also for that our brain is doing this? I have an assignment for school, it would be very helpful if you could direct me! Thank you

[@CamillaBookTok]

It is true that the frequency of a sound is positively related to the amplitude of the sound, that is the sounds that are louder are also higher and the sounds that are quieter are also lower?

[@originalvonster]

How do you find the resonant frequency of your vocal tract before producing different vowels? Is there a way?

[@abdulgafoor7076]

Sir how vocal folds vibrate at multiple frequencies at a time which are called harmonics.. Will pls explain sir

[@doghouse010]

"Average F2 value is so low of 950hz" means 950 and its neighbors are more greatly amplified so we perceive it as a slightly higher pitch? Like the bottle w/ less space? When you say average F2 you mean the fundamental pitch and all the partial frequencies averaged?

[@thelingspace]

+doghouse010 By average F2 value, I mean across speakers, not the frequencies within a speaker. Even within women who speak the same dialect of the same language, there's still variation in what individual people will do. So the reported values in the video are all from averages done across dozens of speakers. As for the F2 value being low, it is still higher than F1 values, and if we could isolate the second formant, we'd definitely hear it as higher pitch than whatever the F1 is, like the bottle with less space. However, what we generally perceive as the pitch of someone's voice is what their fundamental frequency is - the base rate at which their vocal folds vibrate. We don't really hear [i] as higher pitch than [u], even if it has a higher F2 value and a similar F1 value; we hear the fundamental frequency of the person's voice as their pitch. Hope this helps! ^_^

[@chrisylthemissile26]

Slow it down to 0.75, you'll understand better

[@這是什麼配]

but the pitch doesn't go down as the speech slows down

[@985Mindy]

i just did that then saw the comment lol

[@nataliecheuk5456]

What does F0 mean? I know about F1 and F2 but what does it mean when F0=100 Hz? Is that the first component in a spectrogram? thanks.

[@thelingspace]

+Natalie Cheuk This is one of the more confusing labeling choices that got made in linguistics, really. F0 is the fundamental frequency: from a speech perspective, that's whatever the base rate of vibration cycles per second your larynx is producing. So F0 isn't a formant at all; it's just the original frequency of the sound wave. If a speaker's F0 is 100 Hz, that means they're having your larynx vibrate 100 times in a second. Hope that makes sense!

[@jeykim1511]

this is 2 years too late but F0 is pitch

[@marclikens]

I love the energy, and earnest attempt to explain this topic is an easily understandable way, but there is a fair amount of misinformation in this video. One funny example is the statement early on that "your vocal folds basically vibrate at a set rate when you speak", when in fact the fundamental frequency of this fellow's own speech bounces around quite a bit throughout this video. The fundamental frequency of speech can and does move around a lot--not as much as in singing--and is important to the meaning the of the speech (raised pitch for a question, tonal languages like Chinese or Thai).... but nevermind: great video, some details seem a little off.

[@Holleuja]

What does origin(the locus) of the formant means?

[@lizettevillalobos5267]

3:13 excitingggg!

[@InezAllen]

so basically our vocal tracts are really complicated soda bottles? ;)

[@thelingspace]

+Inez Allen Yeah, I don't think you can get a deposit back on what we've got. I'm glad my soda doesn't come with tongues in it. (But in terms of physics... more or less?) ^_^

[@mariebellnero585]

hi I have somes songs on youtube I wont to know if iam singing with vowels

[@JustinWhite7861]

you tubes! :)

[@bleensteen9331]

'Your vocal folds vibrate at the rate they vibrate!' and 'You can't really change the fundamental frequency of the wave!'. Through the whole video your speaking pitch varies about 2 octaves it's almost absurd to be talking like that and speaking those words at the same time. I think that wasn't your point but the way you worded it is quite misleading.

[@enriquebarbanera]

He kind of sounds sometimes like the Jordan Peterson of Linguistics

[@djstatyk1540]

Yoyoyoyoyoyoyyyyyyy

[@premireland]

good idea but you talk too fast make me can't get to the point.