speech
/spitʃ/
speech is pronounced speech (/spitʃ/). Speech refers to the act or process of talking, or a formal address delivered to an audience. It encompasses the articulation, voice quality, and linguistic content produced in spoken language. In broader use, it can denote a specific spoken communication, such as a speech by a president or a public speaker, and the field of study concerned with speaking and its mechanics.
Speech refers to the act or process of talking, or a formal address delivered to an audience. It encompasses the articulation, voice quality, and linguistic content produced in spoken language. In broader use, it can denote a specific spoken communication, such as a speech by a president or a public speaker, and the field of study concerned with speaking and its mechanics.
"She gave a lucid speech that clearly explained the findings."
"The speech as a policy address touched on education and healthcare."
"During the conference, his speech was met with applause from the audience."
Phonetically, speech is /spiːtʃ/ in US, UK, and AU. It starts with /s/ (voiceless alveolar fricative), followed by /p/ + /iː/ to form a consonant cluster /sp/ with a long front vowel, then ends with /tʃ/ (the voiceless postalveolar affricate as in ‘chin’ but with a ‘t’ release). Stress is on the word as a single, monosyllabic unit. Start with a light, quick /s/ then quickly jam the lips together for /p/ and glide to /iː/ before finishing with /tʃ/. Anchor this by saying “s-pee-ch” in one smooth motion.
Common errors include mispronouncing the /sp/ cluster as separate sounds (s followed by a heavy p-offglide), producing a /sk/ blend instead of /sp/ (you might hear ‘speek’ or ‘spech’), and weakening the final /tʃ/ into a simple /ʃ/ or /t/. To fix: practice a tight /sp/ blend in the onset, ensure a short but crisp /p/ release before the long /iː/ to maintain the sequence, and finish with a clean /tʃ/ with a slight lip rounding and tongue blade near the hard palate.
In US English, /spiːtʃ/ with rhoticity not affecting the vowel. UK tends to preserve a similar /iː/ but can have a slightly tighter jaw and more fronted tongue for /iː/. Australian English maintains /spiːtʃ/ but with marginally more centralized vowel quality and a broader lip spreading; the /tʃ/ is often less palatalized and can be a touch lighter. The main difference is prosody rather than phoneme shifts: US tends toward flatter vowels in rapid speech, UK may show sharper consonants, AU may exhibit vowel slight shifts and a more relaxed /iː/.
The challenge lies in the tight consonant cluster at the beginning /sp/ adjacent to the long high vowel /iː/ and the issue of the final affricate /tʃ/. Airflow must not balloon into a fricative for the /s/ and you must transition cleanly to the stop-release into /p/ and then quickly into /iː/. The tongue moves from alveolar to palatal regions in a compact sequence; any lag makes it sound like a longer, less distinct /s/ or a blend with /ʃ/. Also, precise lip rounding for /tʃ/ matters for a crisp finish.
No. Each sound is pronounced: /s/ + /p/ + /iː/ + /tʃ/. The word has no silent letters. The challenge is not silent letters but the rapid sequence of two consonants and the vowel length that requires a smooth, continuous glide into /tʃ/. Practicing as a single syllable with a continuous, fluid articulation helps ensure no phoneme is dropped.
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Speech comes from the Old English speaċ, which meant ‘talk, talkative expression’ and is rooted in the Proto-Germanic spiakōn, related to the verb speak. The word underwent standard Germanic consonant shifts, with the k sound at the end softening in later Middle English, yielding speche in early texts, then speech around the 12th century as spelling stabilized. Historically, the term encompassed both the act of speaking and the content produced in discourse. In Latin-based scholarly traditions, ‘oration’ or ‘orationis’ refers to formal public speaking, a distinction that gradually split into separate terms for everyday speech and ceremonial oratory. By the modern era, speech not only described communicative acts but also the field of study (speech science) and the set pieces produced in political or ceremonial contexts. The semantic shift also included the advent of speech as a vital area of clinical and linguistic research, focusing on articulation, phonation, and cognitive processes in language production. First known uses appear in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts discussing rhetoric and public discourse, with more formalized academic citations emerging in the 17th–18th centuries as systems of oratory and elocution developed in Europe and North America.
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💡 These words have similar meanings to "speech" and can often be used interchangeably.
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Words that rhyme with "speech"
-ach sounds
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