Vowel Space
F1-F2 plane · IPA vowels · diphthong trajectories
Physics: IPA vowel quadrilateral maps to F1-F2 acoustic space. F1 inverse of tongue height (high vowel = low F1). F2 = tongue front-back position. /i/: F1=270,F2=2300 (high-front). /ɑ/: F1=730,F2=1090 (low-back). /u/: F1=300,F2=870 (high-back). Diphthong /aɪ/: F1 falls (opens to closed), F2 rises (back to front). Languages differ: Hawaiian has 5 vowels, Danish ~20. Bark scale: psychoacoustic frequency warping — 1 Bark ≈ 100Hz at low frequencies, widens at higher frequencies (Zwicker 1961). Speaker normalization: different vocal tracts shift formant patterns.