Have you ever wondered 'what is a consonant'? Have you ever wished that you knew how to
pronounce consonants in English accurately?
Well, in this video, I'll show you exactly what a consonant is and how you to start to
work on your consonant pronunciation in English. So here we go...
In the English language, as I'm sure you know, there are 21 consonant letters: like b, c,
d, f, g, h, j, k, l and so on. But in terms of pronunciation we actually have 24 consonant
sounds.
Now, a good consonant definition, in term of pronunciation, is that with consonants
the articulators either touch or are very, very close to one another. Before I give you
an example, just to clarify that the articulators are the tongue, and lips, and teeth, and hard
and soft palate.
So, for example: with a b consonant sound, as in 'bye', 'bike', and 'bus' the two lips
come together completely and then they release the sound suddenly. With an f consonant sound,
as in 'fork', and 'from' and 'fry' the lower lip touches the underside of the upper front
teeth but loosely so there's a little bit of space through which the breath travels.
So it creates a hissy, friction like sound. With a ch consonant sound, part of the touch
touches the hard palette and then releases slowly as in words like 'church', and 'chew'
and 'chalk'. And it a sound like ng as in 'song', 'meeting' and 'talking' the back of
the tongue is raised touching the soft palate and the sound travels out through the nose.
So, what is a constant: well a good way to define consonance sounds is that it is a sound
whereby the articulators touch or almost touch and then releasing suddenly or slowly or they
hold their position.
Now we do have 3 consonants that don't follow that rule exactly, in fact the articulators
don't touch with these three consonants, instead the articulators approximate with one another.
They hold a shape inside the mouth. And those sounds are 'r' as in 'row', 'w' as in 'we'
and 'y' as in 'yellow'. Now interestingly they have the name semi-vowels. And that's
because a good definition for a vowel sound is that with vowels the articulators don't
actually touch or come close together instead they just hold a shape, so we call them consonants
but we they've actually got qualities about them that are like vowel sounds.
Now I've made another video about vowels telling you what a vowel is and how to make vowels,
so at the end of this video why don't you click here and it'll show you a link to that
video and you can learn a little but more about vowel pronunciation.
But if you'd to master your pronounce of consonant sounds then at the end of this video I've
put a link up that will take you to 1 of 5 videos that help you to master the pronunciation
of what are in my opinion 5 of the most commonly mispronounced consonant sounds. Now they are
only 3 minutes long and they show you how to make that sound, with pictures of the tongue
and the lips, and also example words and typical spellings and if you watch to the very end
there's a great free resource that I've shared with you and you can download that and really
master your pronunciation in English and speak with much more confidence and clarity.
So if you enjoyed this video, click like so that you can find it again easily and consider
subscribing to this channel because I post weekly videos here every Tuesday at 8.30pm
GMT (local London time). So I hope to see you here next week.