Learning Sound Patterns

An interactive chart of the International Phonetic Alphabet

http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter1/chapter1.html

This interactive chart allows you to click on IPA symbols and hear their corresponding sounds. It includes a number of sounds that are not found in English.

A treasure trove of language recordings

http://archive.phonetics.ucla.edu

The UCLA phonetics lab archive provides recordings from dozens of languages around the world. It’s a great resource for discovering some of the interesting crosslinguistic differences in sound systems.

A short lecture on babies’ sound learning

http://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_genius_of_babies

In this TED Talk, researcher Pat Kuhl discusses the relationship between perceptual narrowing and the sensitive period for language learning.

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