[General] W, X, Q, J

[elenah]

Hi dear teachers and other clever people,
Could you help please us with my kid's homework?
We not sure about W, X', Q, J- which letters are voiced and which unvoiced?

In the book [ b , v , g , d , z , l , m , n , r, y, ] are voiced letters and [K, p, s, t, f, h, c, s] unvoiced.

But there is nothing about the letters - W, X, Q, J
I think J can be voiced letter but I'm at total lost about W,X,Q

There is a lot of information on voiced and unvoiced sounds but nothing on the letters.

Thank you in advance

 

[jutfrank]

Only sounds can be voiced or unvoiced, not letters.

The letter 'w' usually represents the sound /w/, which is voiced.

 

[elenah]

Thank you very much. What about 'W' - is it voiced or unvoiced?

 

[GoesStation]

W is a letter, not a sound. Post #3 answers your question.

 

[emsr2d2]

Please remember, in future, that we do not help with homework, whether it's your own or your child's. You were very lucky this time. The point of homework is to demonstrate what someone knows and what they don't. This is to help the teacher work out where that person's strengths and weaknesses lie and then help them appropriately. Handing in homework that has effectively been done by someone else helps neither the student nor the teacher.

 

[Skrej]

Memorizing voiced and voiceless letters is not only needless work, but misleading - there are only 26 letters, but around 44 sounds (give or take depending upon the variant of English spoken), which are represented by combinations of those letters. All of those sounds are either voiced or unvoiced. Also, as has been pointed out, the names of the letters are different from the sounds they represent.

Instead of trying to memorize all these different sounds, simply pronounce the sounds they represent (again not the names), and test for vibration. I have students do the "finger test" - simply place a couple of fingers (gently) against your throat and see if you feel any vibration. Voiced simply means the vocal cords are vibrating, which you can easily feel.

If you don't know how to reproduce the sounds, I'd suggest you look them up on any number of online sources, and try to mimic them. A search for 'interactive English phonetic chart' will yield plenty of results.

Here are a few, with both AmE and BrE. Some even have example words, both written and pronounced.
Macmillian chart
One stop English
Cambridge English