This study is comprised of five major sections, each of which focuses on a central linguistic issue germane to the understanding of the general phonetic characteristics of languages. The sections include: (1) a comparative study of terminal consonant releases; (2) the influence of consonants upon contiguous vowels --phase 1: vowel duration; (3) vowel-color of German /E/ sounds; (4) comparative phonetic study of /1/ in American-English, French, German, and Spanish; and (5) the teaching of "clear" versus "dark" /1/ in English, French, German, and Spanish. Detailed description of experimental procedures is accompanied by extensive statistical documentation and analysis largely accompanied by charts, tables, and graphs. The comparative phonetic study of /1/ contains numerous samplings of wide band spectrograms illustrating contrastive articulatory features of German, Spanish, French, and American-English. (RL)