The Different Types of Speech Sounds That Are Produced

There's not a very close connection between orthography and pronunciation. Words that are spelled similarly can be pronounced in completely different ways. This is unlike traditional writing systems where that almost never holds. The international phonetic alphabet represents all the different possible speech sounds by giving a unique symbol to each one. To produce sounds that people can interpret as words the movement of air must pass through the vocal cords, move up through the throat into the mouth and then leave the body.