Consonant: Definition and Examples of Consonants in English • 7ESL (2024)

Consonant in English! What are the consonants? Here you will find the definition of consonant, how to pronounce consonants and different types of consonant sounds with useful examples.

Consonant

Consonant Definition

Consonants are unique part of linguistics that are straightforward to remember, but much more complex to understand. Simply put,consonants are letters that are not vowels. So any letter that is not A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y is aconsonant. Remembering that rule is the easiest way to determine whether a letter is aconsonantor not. However, the full reasoning why a letter is designated as aconsonantis much more complex and interesting, and related to a field called articulatory phonetics, which studies ways we produce speech.

Consonant Sounds

Articulatory phonetics might seems like an intimidating term, but it’s a study that focus on understanding humans and how we articulate to produce speech. In short, it’s studying how we speak. Consonants are defined as speech sounds that humans create that involve airflow that is blocked partly or entirely while being produced. They can be blocked by speech organs like the vocal tract, as well as the teeth, tongue, or lips. These speech sounds are represented by letters that we know asconsonants. There are twenty four speech sounds that formconsonants in English. The easiest way to understand this is by trying it.

If you voice the letters A, E, I, O, and U, you’ll notice that your mouth and vocal cords are open. Your teeth, tongue, and lips are not touching. Now try aconsonantlike T. To pronounce T, you have to use the front of your tongue to interrupt the airflow. Try the letter K and you’ll notice the same thing, you need to use your tongue, this time the back of your tongue, to pronounce the speech sound represented by the letter K. It might be strange to define speech as air flowing through your vocal cords, but that’s exactly what it is. Introducing barriers like the tongue to alter the airflow changes the sound of your speech and thus createsconsonants.

A common question in linguistics is when the letter Y is a vowel and when it is a consonant. Understanding the difference depends on this differentiation between open airflow and blocked airflow. In general, Y is considered a vowel when there are no other vowels in the word, like in “by.” Similarly, when Y is in the middle of a word or the last letter in a word of syllable, it is a vowel, like in “happy” or “recycle.” In these cases, when pronounced, the Y creates airflow in the same way as a vowel. There is no interruption or blockage or air. When Y is a consonant, however, there is a blockage. This usually happens when Y is the first letter of a word or a syllable, like in the words “year” and “lawyer.”

International Phonetic Alphabet

Rather than create additionalconsonants to represent every single sound, which would results in countless additional letters, linguistics have come up with other ways to represent these sounds. While in English we might recognize these sounds as pairs ofconsonants, linguists sometimes use symbols created specifically for each sound. This is called the International Phonetic Alphabet, which assigns unique symbols to speech sounds. This is very useful to help clarify the subtle nuances of speech, like in the example of “then” and “think.” For the average person, however, it’s far more complicated to remember so many symbols. We are left to learn and memorize pronunciation through practice. For the larger field of linguistics, the International Phonetic Alphabet is very useful to properly communicate and learn across languages and cultures.

Consonate Digraphs and Consonant Blends

In terms of articulatory phonetics, there are actually many more speech sounds than there areconsonants. We encounter these in our daily lives as pairs ofconsonants. These are called consonate digraphs, two successiveconsonants that form a single sounds. On their own, eachconsonantmakes a different sound, but together, they make a specific speech sound that the two letters represent. Through school and speaking, we learn these pairs and memorize their sounds.

For example, when written together, the pair TH does not make a sound like a T or an H, but rather makes a sound like in the word “then.” This gets even more complicated because the pronunciation ofconsonantpairs changes depending on the word it’s used in. “Then,” for example, has a softer, shorter TH than in the word “think,” which is a harder, more definitive sound. English does not differentiate these subtleties with additional pairs or symbols, as it would be far too complex. Instead, we just have to learn to pronounce the sounds as we learn to master the language.

Consonant digraphs shouldn’t be confused with words that contain multiple, successiveconsonants. Take the word “sparse,” for example. In this word, there are two points in which we have twoconsonants in succession. These are each pronounced and blended together, but they do not form an entirely new speech sound. Rather, they are what we callconsonantblends orconsonantclusters. These retain the speech sounds of the individualconsonants.

Silent Consonants and Stop Consonants

Silent Consonants

English also has special cases in which theconsonantis not pronounced at all. These are called silentconsonants. These often occur when there are two or moreconsonants together. In some cases, these form hard and fast rules like when a word has the letter K before the letter N. In this situation, the English language teaches is that the K is silent, like in the word “knight” or “knowledge.” There are a few other pairs that form silentconsonants, like B before T, as in the word “subtle,” and P before T, as in “receipt.” The same applies for words with P before N or S, like in “pneumonia,” and “psychic.” Similarly, when a word contains two of the sameconsonantin succession, we do not pronounce both letters. For example, in the word “happy,” we pronounce only one P.

Stop Consonants

In addition to silentconsonants, there are also unique situations in whichconsonants break up a word. These are often referred to as stopconsonants. They are also known as oral occlusives or more informally, a “plosive.” This last term refers to the fact that in a word, “plosive” contains a stopconsonantin the letter P followed by L, which bisects the word and causes airflow to stop completely, as in “explosive.”

While we might not think ofconsonants are more than one letter together, the wordconsonantactually derives from the Latin stem that means “sound together.” Remembering these facts can help to understand what exactly aconsonantis. When all else fails, just remember thatconsonants are all letters that are not vowels.

Consonant Infographic