Definition of phonetics. 1 : the system of speech sounds of a language or group of languages. 2 a : the study and systematic classification of the sounds made in spoken utterance. b : the …

Definition of phonetic 1 : representing the sounds and other phenomena of speech: such as a : constituting an alteration of ordinary spelling that better represents the spoken language, that employs only characters of the regular alphabet, and …

An example of a phonetic sound is the two “th” sounds in English: there is the voiceless fricative /θ/ and the voiced fricative /ð/. One is used to transcribe words like think [θɪŋk] and path [pæθ], and the other is used for words like them [ðɛm] and brother [ˈbrʌðər].

Examples and Observations of Phonetics. "Linguistics contributes to phonetics its phonological understanding of the distinctive patterns that make up the coded, conventional aspects of speech which differentiate individual words and other units of spoken language. Phonetics contributes to linguistics its phonetic understanding of the production and perception of the …