Consonant

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For "consonant" in a musical sense see Consonance and dissonance

All the letters in the alphabet are either consonants or vowels. A consonant is a speech sound in which the breath is at least partly obstructed, and any letter which represents this.[1] Consonants may come singly or in clusters, but must be connected to a vowel to form a syllable.

Consonants have friction when they are spoken, mostly using the position of the tongue against the lips, teeth and roof of the mouth. b and p are plosives, using the lips to produce a tiny sharp sound. Phonetics texts give more details, with diagrams. Consonants may be voiced[2] or unvoiced.[3] The th in the is voiced, but in breath is not.

  • There are 21 consonant letters in English, for 24 consonant sounds in most English accents.[4]p242 Because of the history of the English language, there is no neat on-to-one relationship between letter and sound. th and ch each stand for a single sound, and x in fox stands for two sounds (ks). All these letters are consonants:
B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, X, (sometimes Y), and Z. "Y" is often used as a consonant, but it is sometimes used as a vowel. For example, in the word yellow, y is a consonant. But in the word happy, y is a vowel.
  • The rest of the letters of the alphabet are called vowels. Vowels are underdone, for there are about 20 vowel sounds in most English accents.[4]p237 The vowels are:
A, E, I, O, U (and sometimes Y)

References

  1. ↑ Concise Oxford English Dictionary.
  2. ↑ Sound uttered with the resonance of the vocal cords.
  3. ↑ mere breath
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Crystal, David 1995. The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language. Cambridge.
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Questions for article: consonant diagraphs

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