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Phoniatrics is a branch of medicine focused on the treatment of speech defects. It is closely related to phonetics, which is the study of speech sounds, their production, and their acoustic properties. Phonetics explores how the vocal tract is used to create sounds (articulatory phonetics), the characteristics of these sounds (acoustic phonetics), and how sounds are combined into syllables, words, and sentences (linguistic phonetics). While phonetics provides the foundational understanding of speech sounds, phoniatrics applies this knowledge to address and correct disorders related to speech production.12

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