Glossary
Terms you may meet in Awaaz and in speech therapy.
- Articulation
- How sounds are shaped with the lips, tongue, teeth, jaw and palate.
- Speech sound (phoneme)
- The smallest sound that can change a word’s meaning, like the difference between “red” and “wed”.
- Target sound
- The sound an activity focuses on.
- IPA
- The International Phonetic Alphabet, a way of writing each speech sound with its own symbol.
- Minimal pair
- Two words that differ by one sound, such as “ship” and “sip”, or شیر and سیر.
- Substitution
- One sound used in place of another, such as W for R.
- Omission
- A sound left out of a word.
- Distortion
- A sound made in an unusual way, so it sounds slightly different.
- Addition
- An extra sound added to a word.
- Aspiration
- A small puff of air after a sound. In Urdu it distinguishes sounds like چ and چھ.
- Speech-language therapist
- A qualified professional who assesses and supports speech, language, communication and swallowing. Also called a speech-language pathologist.
- Observation
- In Awaaz, a description of what the automated system detected in a set of recordings. Not a diagnosis.
- Recording quality
- Whether a recording is clear enough to analyse. Problems with quality are never treated as speech difficulties.
- Nastaliq
- The flowing calligraphic style in which Urdu is traditionally written and read.