Pronounce English Accurately

Video Text

Now we're going to learn how to make and distinguish all the consonant sounds of English, and learn the IPA transcription for them at the same time.

Throughout the course, I will be using this diagram of the speech organs to show exactly which of your speech organs should be in action for a particular sound, and what they should be doing.

It should be self-explanatory, but let's take just a moment to familiarise ourselves with it.

Here's the nose, here are the lips, and these are the upper and lower teeth.

This large area is the most versatile of all the speech organs, the tongue – it moves around all over the place and forms different shapes to make different sounds.

Up here is a bony ridge behind the upper teeth, and behind that is the roof of the mouth, the hard palate.

Further back is the soft palate and even further back is your uvula, which can be lowered to open the nasal cavity, up here, or raised to block it.

Furthest back of all is our larynx, which contains the vocal folds – the proper name for the vocal cords. We can vibrate our vocal folds or not vibrate them.

The consonants of English – in fact the consonants of all the languages of the world – can be classified and described in terms of three factors: voicing, place of articulation, and manner of articulation.

Let's look at each of these – the presence or absence of voicing first.

Here, in the throat, the larynx contains the vocal folds.

This is where we produce voicing. Put your hand on your throat and try saying a very long [ssss] sound. Nothing happens in the larynx – this sound is voiceless.

Then change it to [zzzz], like a bee buzzing.

You should be able to feel the vibration of the vocal folds with your hand.

Or you can put your hands over your ears and do the same thing

[ssss-zzz]

and you can really hear – and feel – the voicing.

Alternate [ssss-zzzz] and you should feel the voicing literally switching on and off.

Exactly the same applies to other pairs of voiceless and voiced sounds, such as [ffff-vvvv] and [ʃʃʃʃ-ʒʒʒʒ].

That's voicing, and for every consonant sound we will determine whether it is voiced or voiceless.

Consonant sounds are made at various places in the mouth, from those made right at the front using the lips – /w/ and /p/ and /b/ – to consonants made behind the upper teeth, /t/, /d/, /s/ and /z/ for example, to those made further back – /k/ and /g/ and, right back in the larynx, /h/.

These are the various PLACES OF ARTICULATION and we'll identify which place of articulation is used as we come to each of the consonants in the coming lessons.

MANNER OF ARTICULATION describes how the speech organs are used to interrupt, disturb or otherwise affect the flow of air from the lungs.

The air can be stopped altogether – as in a /p/ sound – and then released in a sudden explosion.

Sounds which involve a complete stoppage of the air followed by an explosive release are called 'stops' or 'plosives' – the two names are equivalent.

Other examples of stops or plosives are /t/, /k/ and /g/.

Or the air can be constricted very tightly by the speech organs so that it's forced through a very narrow passage with a lot of friction noise.

Examples of this are /s, z, ʃ, ʒ, f/ and /v/.

Sounds with friction noise are called fricatives.

Or the oral passage can be blocked altogether but the air allowed to pass out through the nasal cavity – as in an /m/ sound. Sounds made in this way this are 'nasals'.

Those are some of the MANNERS of articulation.

There are more places and manners of articulation than that, which we will as we come to them.

For the rest of this lesson I'm going to go rapidly through the whole set of English consonants, giving a maximum of just three example words for each sound.

As far as possible, I will say each consonant with a neutral vowel sound after it, in between vowel sounds, and with a vowel sound before it, like this: /pʌ - ʌpʌ - ʌp/.

This is to simulate what each consonant sounds like at the beginning of a word – that's initial position – in the middle of a word, medial position, and at the end of a word – final position.

I say 'as far as possible' because some of the sounds can't occur in certain positions – for instance we can't have a /h/ sound or a /j/ sound at the end of a word.

Then where possible I'll give an example of words with the consonant sound in each position.

As I do each of the sounds, I'll put the IPA transcription up on the screen.

IPA transcriptions of target sounds appear inside oblique slants like this: //, so that we know we are dealing with the IPA.

In many cases the IPA transcription is the same as normal spelling but there are some special symbols you need to learn.

I'm not going to go into detail at this stage as I just want to go through them all quickly.

The purpose of this lesson is to get the measure of how many contrastive consonants there are, to have a first look at the transcriptions, and, most important of all, for you to identify which ones you find difficult.

I'm going to start with the consonants produced right at the front of the mouth – /w/, /p/ and /b/ – and work systematically back until we get to the one produced furthest at the back, right in the larynx – that's the /h/ sound.

Off we go:

GO SLOW!

/wʌ - ʌwʌ/ 'want' - 'away'

/pʌ - ʌpʌ - ʌp/ 'pat' - 'open' - 'top'

/bʌ - ʌbʌ - ʌb/ 'bike' - 'maybe' - 'nib'

/mʌ - ʌmʌ - ʌm/ 'map' - 'hammer' - 'home'

/fʌ - ʌfʌ - ʌf/ 'fish' - 'affect' - 'half'

/vʌ - ʌvʌ - ʌv/ 'vain' - 'cover' - 'halve'

/θʌ - ʌθʌ - ʌθ/ 'think' - 'toothache' - 'breath'

/ðʌ - ʌðʌ - ʌð/ 'this' - 'other' - 'breathe'

/tʌ - ʌtʌ - ʌt/ 'time' - 'button' - 'coat'

/dʌ - ʌdʌ - ʌd/ 'dip' - 'ladder' - 'loud'

/sʌ - ʌsʌ - ʌs/ 'sick' - 'listen' - 'race'

/zʌ - ʌzʌ - ʌz/ 'zone' - 'desert' - 'pigs'

/nʌ - ʌnʌ - ʌn/ 'night' - 'beneath' - 'own'

/lʌ - ʌlʌ - ʌl/ 'light' - 'alive' - 'whale'

/ʃʌ - ʌʃʌ - ʌʃ/ 'sharp' - 'ashamed' - 'push'

/ʒʌ - ʌʒʌ - ʌʒ/ 'genre' - 'measure' - 'beige'

/tʃʌ - ʌtʃʌ - ʌtʃ/ 'charm' - 'kitchen' - 'reach'

/dʒʌ - ʌdʒʌ - ʌdʒ/ 'jump' - 'magic' - 'page'

/rʌ - ʌrʌ/ 'rug' - 'parrot'

/jʌ - ʌjʌ/ 'yard' - 'royal'

/kʌ - ʌkʌ - ʌk/ 'cat' - 'jacket' - 'hike'

/gʌ - ʌgʌ - ʌg/ 'gate' - 'bigger' - 'egg'

/ʌŋ - ʌŋʌ/ 'singer' - 'ring'

/hʌ - ʌhʌ/ 'horse' - 'ahead'

Those are all the consonant phonemes of English – 24 in total. Most of them should be no problem but, according to the sound system of your first language, some will be difficult to make or distinguish from each other.

Those are the ones you need to concentrate on in the following, more detailed, lessons.