So far in these blogs, we have looked at vowel sounds and their phonetic symbols. Now let's move on to consonant sounds.
Let’s look at all the English language consonant sounds together:
(reproduced from the EnglishClub website: Interactive Phonemic Chart | Pronunciation | EnglishClub)
You’ll probably be relieved to know that many of the consonant phonetic symbols actually look the same as the alphabet letters that are (usually) used to represent their sounds. By this, I mean that these phonetic symbols represent the sound of the letter, not its name. For example, / z / represents the sound 'zzzz' and not the name of the letter, i.e. not 'Z' ('zed'); / f / represents the sound 'ffff' and not 'F' ('ef'). Here they all are:
/ p / / f / / t / / s / / k / / b / / v / / d / / z / / g / / h / / m / / n / / r / / l / / w /
We will therefore only focus briefly on these phonetic symbols and mostly investigate the symbols which do look different from alphabet letters or the alphabet letters that usually represent them in written English. These are as follows:
/ θ / / ʧ / / ʃ / / ð / / ʤ / / ʒ / / ŋ / / j /
However, before we go any further, we need to talk about voiced and voiceless consonants. So join me tomorrow to find out more!
For more information about listening to, watching and practising phonetic symbols and their corresponding sounds, please click here.
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