English Consonant Sounds

Voiceless and voiced

• Voiceless consonants-no vibration of the vocal cords and more pulmonic air.
• Voiced consonants-the vocal cords vibrate, limiting the airflow.

Place of articulation

• Bilabial consonants / m /, / p / and / b / are made with both lips.
• Labio-dental consonants / f / and / v / are made with the upper teeth and the lower lip.
• Dental consonants / θ / and / ð / are made with the tip of the tongue against the upper teeth.
• Alveolar consonants / n /, / t /, / s /, / z / and / l / are made with the tip of the tongue against or near to the ridge behind the upper teeth.
• Postalveolar consonants / ʃ /, / ʒ /, / ʧ / and / ʤ / are made with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, placing them a bit further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not quite as far back as the hard palate.
• Velar consonants / ŋ /, / k / and / g / are made with the back part of the tongue against the back part of the roof of the mouth.

Manner of articulation

• Nasal consonants / m /, / n / and / ŋ / are made with the velum lowered, allowing air to escape through the nose.
• Plosives or stop consonants / p /, / b /, / t /, / d /, / k / and / g / are made by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract.
• Fricative consonants / f /, / v /, / θ /, / ð /, / s / and / z / are made by forcing air through a narrow channel by placing two articulators close together.
• Affricate consonants / ʧ / and / ʤ / start as plosives, but release as fricatives rather than directly into the following vowel.

Difficulties

Titles of published practice materials (such as Tree or Three, Ship or Sheep etc.) remind us that just ONE misplaced or misunderstood sound can completely change the meaning of a word.

Knowledge of a first language usually means that a learner's speech organs (tongue, alveolar ridge, hard & soft palate) have physically rehearsed certain sets of relationships many times to produce the sounds of that language. Interaction with other speakers of a first language, in most cases ones parents from an early age, gives a native English person a considerable amount of listening comprehension practice in recognising subtle differences such as 'right v light' (initial consonant sounds) or 'watch v wash' (final consonant sounds).

A second language is likely to share some of the sounds of a first, but not all. So a Japanese or a Swedish learner of English will probably not have had so many opportunities as a native speaker to produce and recognise these fine distinctions.

Some people use the phrase 'language interference' to describe the habit of learners to use 'the nearest sounds in their first language' in attempting to produce sounds in a second language which are new to them &/or cause them difficulty. Each language a person can use proficiently adds to their skills in producing sounds. Managing ones speech organs is a motor skill like keeping ones arm or leg muscles in good trim. Knowledge of a first language is therefore a positive gain. While we should not take the concept of 'L1 interference' completely literally, this website nevertheless has a well used section on common phonological mistakes by language background.

Practice Exercises

Mimimal Pairs

Lists where each pair of word differs in just ONE consonant or vowel sound.

Consonant Clusters

When there are three or more consonants together, native speakers do not always produce as many consonant sounds.

For example, the final consonant cluster in the word "fifths" is usually reduced to the last two consonant phonemes.

These lists practise final consonant clusters, since lists of initial consonant clusters can easily be found in a dictionary, and consonant strings at the beginnings of words generally cause fewer difficulties.

Full word lists -------for consonant clusters in final position beginning with:

Assimilation

A change in the quality of the phoneme - perhaps to a different phoneme altogether!
example: / t / changes to / p / before / m / (basket maker) / b / (cat burglar) or / p / (circuit board).

The change, in each of the above cases, results from a particular phonetic environment.
[See Wikipedia entry explaining assimilation &/or use the assimilation practice lists on this site.

Elision

Elision is the deletion of sounds (omission of phonemes) which occurs frequently in connected speech.