What You Need To Know For Consonants

What You Need To Know For Consonants

1 . Place of Articulation

This refers to where the sound is produced.

BILABIAL, LABIODENTAL, DENTAL/INTERDENTAL, ALVEOLAR, PALATAL, VELAR, GLOTTAL.

2 . Manner of Articulation

This refers to how the sound is made.

Obstruent s (sounds made with a high degree of air obstruction):

STOPS: During production of these sounds, the airflow from the lungs is completely blocked at some point.

FRICATIVES: The flow of air is constricted, but not totally stopped or blocked. The restricted airflow through the narrowed opening creates friction (this is where the term “fricative” comes from).

AFFRICATES: These can be thought of as a combination of a stop and a fricative. These sounds begin like stops, with a complete blockage of air/closure of the vocal tract, and end with a restricted flow of air like fricatives.

Sonorants (sounds made with relatively little obstruction of air):

NASALS: With these sounds, the flow of air is cut off through the mouth and redirected through the nasal passage instead. In a sense, there’s complete obstruction because no air escapes through the mouth, which is why nasals sometimes called nasal stops. But because the air flows unobstructed through the nose, these sounds are classified as sonorants.

LIQUIDS: These sounds are created with little obstruction of air. Instead, we position our tongue in the vocal tract and let the air pass around it. Because it’s hard to pinpoint the obstruction, these sounds are less “solid” than some other consonants, which is why they’re called liquids.

GLIDES: These sounds, like liquids, are produced with very little obstruction of air. To produce glides, we bring articulators close together and then pull them apart, letting the sound glide off them.

Glides are sometimes referred to as “semi-vowels” because they are mid-way between consonants and vowels, but they are classified as consonants. /y/ and /w/ are acoustically similar to /i/ and /u/.

3 . Voicing

Are the vocal cords vibrating (voiced) or not vibrating (voiceless)? Feel your throat when you produce consonants to feel if voicing is present or not, or cover yours and listen for the reverberation.

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