I know when you create a different shape with your mouth it makes a different vowel (a, e, i, u, o) but what is actually the difference in the sound, how can our ears tell the difference?
In: Physics
You are hearing a complex waveform, but the brain seems to concentrate on the two strongest frequency components of a vowel sound. These are called the formants. (Sometimes more than two formants are needed.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formant
The formants of a language can be plotted and are often separated to be distinctive. You can also study dialects and accents this since they often involve shifts in formants from their “standard” position or even collapse of two elsewhere-distinct vowels into the same formants.
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