We have discussed the 12 consonant visemes in lipreading but can you recognise them from their pictures?
Have a go at the quiz below to see if you can identify all 12 visemes correctly:
The sounds ‘p’ ‘b’ and ‘m’ share a viseme – they all have the same lipshape/facial movements.
Because of they share a viseme, they are known as homophenes – a homophene is a sound that shares a viseme with another sound.
Can you give me an example of 3 words that would look similar because of the potential for p/b/m becoming confused?
For example: pat / bat / mat
Examples you might have thought of ….
Previously I described how each speech sound has a matching lipshape or viseme made when the neck, lips, teeth, tongue and cheeks move to make the sound and that some sounds have visemes that are very similar to others.
Where more than one sound shares the same viseme or shape, they are referred to as homophenes.
For example, the sounds:
all share the same viseme and form a homophene group.
Similarly the sounds:
share the same viseme and form another homophene group.
There are 24 consonant sounds or phonemes in Standard English.
When you make one of these sounds your neck, lips, tongue, teeth, cheeks, etc all move – so each sound has a matching lipshape known as a viseme.
Some of these visemes look very similar so it is generally accepted that there are only 12 consonant visemes.
We can divide the consonant visemes into the:
The first question many new learners ask is ‘what is lipreading?’
Lipreading is not simply watching someone’s lips … it involves far more than that and for that reason is often called ‘speechreading’.
The slideshow below describes some of the basics of what lipreading involves – you can also download an accompanying handout.
Download handout: What is lipreading?