Linguistics

Broadly conceived, linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and a linguist is someone who engages in this study. (Lay people sometimes use the term linguistician, but as Aitchison 2003 points out, this is "too much of a tongue-twister to become generally accepted.")

Representation of speech

• International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), a system used to write down and reproduce the sounds of human speech.
• SAMPA, an ASCII-only transcription for the IPA used by some authors. See also the SAMPA home page.