Know More About Consonant Sounds and Letters in English

Know More About Consonant Sounds and Letters in English A consonant is a  speech sound thats not a vowel. The  sound of a consonant is produced by a partial or complete obstruction of the airstream by a constriction of the speech  organs. In writing, a consonant is any  letter of the alphabet except  A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes  Y. There are 24 consonant sounds in English, some voiced (made by a vibration of the vocal cords) and some voiceless (no vibration). Consonants Versus Vowels   When spoken vowels have no obstruction in the mouth, as opposed to consonants, which do. In his book Letter Perfect, the author David Sacks described the difference between speaking consonants and vowels this way: Whereas vowels are pronounced from the vocal cords with  minimal  shaping of expelled breath, consonant sounds are created through obstruction or  channeling  of the breath by the lips, teeth, tongue, throat, or nasal passage.... Some consonants, like B, involve the vocal cords; others dont. Some, like R or W, flow the breath in a way that steers them relatively close to being vowels. When consonants and vowels are put together, they form syllables, which are the basic units of pronunciation. Syllables, in turn, are the foundation of words in English grammar. Phonetically, however, consonants are much more variable. Consonant Blends and Digraphs When two or more consonant sounds are pronounced in succession without an intervening vowel (as in the words dream and bursts), the group is called a consonant blend or consonant cluster. In a consonant blend, the sound of each individual letter can be heard. By contrast, in a consonant digraph,  two successive letters represent a single sound. Common digraphs include G and H, which together mimic the sound of F (as in the word enough), and the letters P and H, which also sound like an F (as in phone). Silent Consonants In a number of cases in English, consonant letters can be silent, such as the letter B  following M (as in the word dumb), the letter  K  before  N  (know), and  the letters B and P before T (debt and receipt).  When a double consonant appears in a word,  usually only one of the two consonants is sounded (as in ball or summer). Stop Consonants Consonants can also serve as a means of bracketing a vowel, stopping their sound.  These are called  stop consonants  because the air in the vocal tract is completely stopped at some point, usually by the tongue, lips, or teeth.  Then to make the consonant sound, the air is suddenly released. The letters B, D, and G are the most frequently used stops, though P, T, and K also can serve the same function. Words that contain stop consonants include bib and kit. Stop consonants are also called plosives, as their sounds are small explosions of air in the mouth. Consonance Broadly,  consonance  is the repetition of consonant  sounds; more specifically,  consonance  is the repetition of the consonant sounds of accented syllables  or important words.  Consonance is frequently used in poetry, song lyrics, and prose when the writer wants to create a sense of rhythm. One well-known example of this literary device is the tongue twister, She sells seashells by the seashore. Using A and An   In general, words that begin with vowels should be introduced by the indefinite article an, while words that start with consonants are set off with an a instead. However, when the consonants at the beginning of the word produce a vowel sound, you would use the article an instead (an honor, a house).