voiced consonants and unvoiced consonants

Status
Not open for further replies.

leungss

Member
Joined
Sep 15, 2008
Member Type
Student or Learner
I have checked several websites about voiced consonants and voiceless consonants, but each site has different lists of voiced and voiceless consonants.

voiced: b, d, th, v, z, g (some other sites list the following in addition: l, r, j, m)

voiceless: p, t, k, s, sh, ch, (some other sites list the following in addition: f, th)

are those lists completed? did I miss anything?

recently I 've been practising the z sound as in "these", "assign", "shells", "machines", but I always ended up pronouncing the z sound as s :-(. It's very hard for me vibrate my vocal cord while pronouncing the s sound, any advice will be appreciated. thanks in advanced! :-D
 

Raymott

VIP Member
Joined
Jun 29, 2008
Member Type
Academic
Native Language
English
Home Country
Australia
Current Location
Australia
I have checked several websites about voiced consonants and voiceless consonants, but each site has different lists of voiced and voiceless consonants.

voiced: b, d, th, v, z, g (some other sites list the following in addition: l, r, j, m)

voiceless: p, t, k, s, sh, ch, (some other sites list the following in addition: f, th)

are those lists completed? did I miss anything?

recently I 've been practising the z sound as in "these", "assign", "shells", "machines", but I always ended up pronouncing the z sound as s :-(. It's very hard for me vibrate my vocal cord while pronouncing the s sound, any advice will be appreciated. thanks in advanced! :-D
There's no /z/ is assign. The others are OK.
The sites you've checked were the wrong ones.
The site below gives the whole consonant table with sound files:
Constanants
On any IPA table the voiceless consonants are on the left, the voiced on the right.
[FONT=&quot]Voiceless: p, t, k, f, θ, s, ʃ(sh), h, ʍ(wh), tʃ(ch)[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Voiced : b, d, g, m, n, ŋ(ng), v, ð(th), z, ʒ(zh), ɹ, l, j, w, dʒ (dzh)[/FONT]
 

leungss

Member
Joined
Sep 15, 2008
Member Type
Student or Learner
thanks a lot. somehow some of the IPA symbols appeared as a square on this page :?:
 

Raymott

VIP Member
Joined
Jun 29, 2008
Member Type
Academic
Native Language
English
Home Country
Australia
Current Location
Australia
thanks a lot. somehow some of the IPA symbols appeared as a square on this page :?:
Oh, never mind, you can find them anywhere.
 

Mad-ox

Key Member
Joined
Aug 18, 2006
Member Type
English Teacher
Native Language
Hungarian
Home Country
Romania
Current Location
Romania
There's no /z/ is assign. The others are OK.
The sites you've checked were the wrong ones.
The site below gives the whole consonant table with sound files:
Constanants
On any IPA table the voiceless consonants are on the left, the voiced on the right.
[FONT=&quot]Voiceless: p, t, k, f, θ, s, ʃ(sh), h, ʍ(wh), tʃ(ch)[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Voiced : b, d, g, m, n, ŋ(ng), v, ð(th), z, ʒ(zh), ɹ, l, j, w, dʒ (dzh)[/FONT]


Please, give me examples of words where we can find the voiced consonant W and the voiceless consonant ʍ. In fact I do not quite understand the difference between these two consonant sounds.



Madox
 

Raymott

VIP Member
Joined
Jun 29, 2008
Member Type
Academic
Native Language
English
Home Country
Australia
Current Location
Australia
Please, give me examples of words where we can find the voiced consonant W and the voiceless consonant ʍ. In fact I do not quite understand the difference between these two consonant sounds.



Madox
[FONT=&quot]ʍ(wh) - where, which, whether ...
w - we, were, Willy Wonka ...
I wouldn't worry about this too much. These days many people do not both to pronounce 'wh' and use 'w' for all these words. It's rare in Australia. I never use
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]ʍ[/FONT][FONT=&quot].
It sounds like /hw/ - hwich, etc. or a simultaneous /w/ and /h/.


[/FONT]
 

Mad-ox

Key Member
Joined
Aug 18, 2006
Member Type
English Teacher
Native Language
Hungarian
Home Country
Romania
Current Location
Romania
[FONT=&quot]ʍ(wh) - where, which, whether ...
w - we, were, Willy Wonka ...
I wouldn't worry about this too much. These days many people do not both to pronounce 'wh' and use 'w' for all these words. It's rare in Australia. I never use
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]ʍ[/FONT][FONT=&quot].
It sounds like /hw/ - hwich, etc. or a simultaneous /w/ and /h/.


[/FONT]


I see,
thanks for the explanation,

Unfortunately, I have to worry since I will have to take a difficult exam in phonetics and phonology.


best regards,
Madox
 

Raymott

VIP Member
Joined
Jun 29, 2008
Member Type
Academic
Native Language
English
Home Country
Australia
Current Location
Australia
I see,
thanks for the explanation,

Unfortunately, I have to worry since I will have to take a difficult exam in phonetics and phonology.


best regards,
Madox
Ah, then you are right to worry. ;-)
 

orangutan

Member
Joined
May 2, 2009
Member Type
Academic
Native Language
English
Home Country
Great Britain
Current Location
Russian Federation
recently I 've been practising the z sound as in "these", "assign", "shells", "machines", but I always ended up pronouncing the z sound as s :-(. It's very hard for me vibrate my vocal cord while pronouncing the s sound, any advice will be appreciated. thanks in advanced! :-D

I am no expert on phonetics, but I have found the following useful for learning difficult voiced sounds in another language.

If you stop your ears and say voiceless and voiced sounds alternately, you should be very aware of the resonance that goes with voiced sounds (whereas voiceless ones are just like a whisper). Then practise saying /s/ but trying to get the same resonance.

Good luck!
 

BobK

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Jul 29, 2006
Location
Spencers Wood, near Reading, UK
Member Type
Retired English Teacher
Native Language
English
Home Country
UK
Current Location
UK
...

Unfortunately, I have to worry since I will have to take a difficult exam in phonetics and phonology.


Ah, then you are right to worry. ;-)

I'm not sure you are. For the purposes of TEFL, there are 44 English phonemes, listed in a site that Raymott recommended in another thread: IPA Typewriter it has no ʍ.

That voiceless sound does exist in some versions of English. I have told elsewhere the story of a dictation I was given by an English teacher born in Edinburgh, who expected us to distinguish between "Wales" and "whales". Her accent was Scottish. The distinction does not exist in RP, and we only hear it when a Br English speaker is whispering. (See the table of RP consonants in Received Pronunciation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ).

Madox, you should check with your teacher whether you are right to worry. It depends how difficult your exam is. Raymott is right to say that [ʍ] is distinct from [w], but there are many many speech sounds that your course may well not cover.

b
 
Last edited:

konungursvia

VIP Member
Joined
Mar 20, 2009
Member Type
Academic
Native Language
English
Home Country
Canada
Current Location
Canada
My web site on phonetics has a two relevant pages designed for such difficulties: "Voiced / Unvoiced Consonants" and "Drills in Final S" which many learners have difficulty with:

Perfect English Pronunciation

Hope this helps.
 

Raymott

VIP Member
Joined
Jun 29, 2008
Member Type
Academic
Native Language
English
Home Country
Australia
Current Location
Australia
I'm not sure you are. For the purposes of TEFL, there are 44 English phonemes, listed in a site that Raymott recommended in another thread: IPA Typewriter it has no ʍ.

There are many phonetic symbols that the IPA typewriter doesn't have. It's actually a phonemic only typewriter for English only.

That voiceless sound does exist in some versions of English. I have told elsewhere the story of a dictation I was given by an English teacher born in Edinburgh, who expected us to distinguish between "Wales" and "whales".
Indeed. My old English teacher was quite concerned about this. But she could never explain (and I still don't understand) why "wh" was pronounced "hw". In fact teachers of English to English native speakers are the only people who seem to have an issue with this.


Madox, you should check with your teacher whether you are right to worry. It depends how difficult your exam is. Raymott is right to say that [ʍ] is distinct from [w], but there are many many speech sounds that your course may well not cover.

Of course this is true. I was assuming that Mad-Ox knew what level of exam he was talking about. A "difficult exam in phonetics" does not just cover English sounds.


b
I'm sure with all this information, Mad-ox will know exactly how much he has to worry. ;-)
 

orangutan

Member
Joined
May 2, 2009
Member Type
Academic
Native Language
English
Home Country
Great Britain
Current Location
Russian Federation
For IPA for modern standard English, people might also like to look at John Wells' web site, e.g. this chart and a discussion of variations here: IPA transcription systems for English.

(Sorry, I botched the formatting of this link - perhaps a moderator could help?)
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Mad-ox

Key Member
Joined
Aug 18, 2006
Member Type
English Teacher
Native Language
Hungarian
Home Country
Romania
Current Location
Romania

anupumh

Senior Member
Joined
Jul 30, 2009
Member Type
Student or Learner
Native Language
Hindi
Home Country
India
Current Location
India
[FONT=&quot]ʍ(wh) - where, which, whether ...[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]w - we, were, Willy Wonka ...[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]I wouldn't worry about this too much. These days many people do not both to pronounce 'wh' and use 'w' for all these words. It's rare in Australia. I never use [/FONT][FONT=&quot]ʍ[/FONT][FONT=&quot].[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]It sounds like /hw/ - hwich, etc. or a simultaneous /w/ and /h/.[/FONT]


This is new for me. Till now I had learnt that English has 24 consonant sounds and 20 vowel sounds. I never knew about the existance of unvoiced W (wh), does this sound find mention in the cambridge pronunciation dictionary (Daniel Jones).

I belive almost every phonetic symbol which represents a sound has variants (phonemes)
ex. /L/ has a dark form dark L, /R/ has 3 variants, clipped (british), rolled (american) and trilled (scottish), /T/ has various variants flapped, tapped, etc
 
Last edited:

Raymott

VIP Member
Joined
Jun 29, 2008
Member Type
Academic
Native Language
English
Home Country
Australia
Current Location
Australia
This is new for me.
Great! I've been able to teach you something. :-D

Till now I had learnt that English has 24 consonant sounds and 20 vowel sounds. I never knew about the existance of unvoiced W (wh), does this sound find mention in the cambridge pronunciation dictionary (Daniel Jones).
I don't know. I don't have that book.

I belive almost every phonetic symbol which represents a sound has variants (phonemes)
ex. /L/ has a dark form dark L, /R/ has 3 variants, clipped (british), rolled (american) and trilled (scottish), /T/ has various variants flapped, tapped, etc
Many phonemes have allophones, yes. But since [FONT=&quot]/ʍ/ and /w/ are found in 'which' and 'witch', respectively, which are minimal pairs in some dialects such as Scottish, they are not allophones of the same phoneme.


[/FONT]
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top