Lautliche

Lautliche is an adjective used in linguistics to describe aspects of language that relate to the actual sounds of speech, i.e., the phonetic realization of language. It refers to how words and utterances are pronounced, including articulation and auditory properties, rather than to their written form. The term is commonly contrasted with orthographic or graphemic levels of representation.

The word is formed from the German noun Laut (sound) plus the suffix -lich, and is related to, but less common than, terms like lautsprachlich or phonetisch. In scholarly usage, lautliche descriptions cover the features of sounds such as voicing, place and manner of articulation, aspiration, nasalization, and vowel quality, as well as phenomena like phonetic allophones and phoneme realization in different contexts. Phrases frequently encountered include lautliche Transkription (often using the International Phonetic Alphabet), lautliche Merkmale, and lautliche Veränderungen (sound changes).

In practice, lautliche analysis investigates how sounds are produced and perceived, how they interact in connected speech, and how they may differ from their written representations. The term is widely used in historical and descriptive linguistics, though in modern terminology lautsprachlich or phonetic/phonological phrasing is often preferred for clarity.

Related concepts include Lautschrift (phonetic transcription), Phonetik, and Phonologie, which together describe the sounds of language from articulation to abstract representation.