Phonetics studies the physical formation of phonemes, while phonology examines how they are combined to create meaning in a language. The phonetic alphabet represents the sound of each phoneme, and phonology looks at patterns and changes in meaning. Both aspects of sound production are necessary for language creation.
Phonetics refers to the sounds of speech, while phonology studies how those sounds are put together to create meaning. Phonemes, or units of sound that are used in all languages to make words, are at the heart of the study of phonetics. Phonology studies the rules in a given language that govern how those phonemes are combined to make meaningful words. Phonetics and phonology study two different aspects of sound, but the concepts depend on each other in the creation of language.
Each unit of sound, regardless of language, is called a phoneme. Phonetics tries to understand how each of these phonemes is physically formed and produced by man. These units can be classified based on how they are manufactured and whether they are audible or deaf. This aspect of phonetics is commonly used by linguists and speech specialists to understand how humans create the sounds of speech and why speech problems sometimes occur.
The phonetic alphabet is a collection of symbols intended to represent the actual sound of each phoneme spoken in different situations. For example, a consonant can have two different symbols because it has two different ways of being pronounced depending on the word it is used in. These phonetic symbols are commonly found in dictionaries as a guide on how to pronounce unfamiliar words correctly. Each symbol can represent a letter or a group of letters that combine to make a sound.
Phonology is the study of how phonemes are put together and how they create meaning for the speaker of a given language. Some phonemes may have slightly different meanings or usages in two different languages, and phonology is an attempt to understand these changes in meaning. Furthermore, historical or diachronic phonology studies how the phonemes of a word can change over time and how this affects the meaning of the word. Phonology also looks at the patterns of how phonemes are used in a language. For example, some of these units are only used in the middle or end of a word, but never at the beginning.
Phonetics and phonology differ in that phonetics studies the production of sounds and phonology studies the combination of sounds. Phonetics can be used to explore the sounds used in any language, but phonology only examines one language at a time. Both depend on each other because without the production of sounds there would be no words, but without the rules for putting them together, sounds would have no meaning. They work together in important ways, but both cover their own specific part of language production.
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