Whenever you are analyzing or documenting a language, you have to analyze the vowel system. A formant represents several prominent bands of frequency that is measured in hertz. These black bands are what determine the phonetic quality of the vowel. Unlike consonants, vowels have energy at many frequencies. The frequencies at which these black bands occur are different in the /a/ vowel than they are in the /e/ vowel, for example. By measuring vowel formants, specifically Formant 1 and Formant 2 (or F1 and F2) we can pinpoint approximately where the vowel is produced in the mouth. In this video tutorial, you will learn what formants are and how to measure formants in a language in order to plot vowels.
