Phonetic reduction, which includes mumbled, sloppy or generally less articulated speech, also occurs in phrases that serve other social purposes, such as self-talk, expressing uncertainty or closing ...

Consider yourself an expert when it comes to telecommunications methods, alphabets, or other obscure—but still widely used in many professions—ways of communication? Then you’ll want to test your ...

Ambiguous speech production is a common challenge for learners of a second language (L2), but identifying whether the problem lies in pronunciation or deeper linguistic processing is not always ...

Every writing system represents speech a little differently, and no system is completely faithful to how words are actually pronounced. For over a century, the International Phonetic Alphabet has ...

Did you know that there is a military alphabet? This is a special phonetic alphabet that is used by the military to communicate over radios and other devices. The military alphabet was created in ...

Sometimes words just have to be spelled for others. I’ve been on phone conversations where the person on the other end is spelling for me and it’s painful. “Was that a ‘b’ or a ‘p’?” Sometimes they’ll ...

D as in "Dora" — or "David"? The Nazis had eliminated Jewish names from the German spelling alphabet. The names are to return, at least symbolically. It is a common situation during a phone call: the ...