Learn the English consonant sounds you'll need to know to sound like an eloquent and polished speaker of the English language
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| Introduction |
| Gina: I’m your host Gina. |
| Gabriella: And I’m Gabriella. |
| Gina: Consonants in British English. |
| Gabriella: In this series, we will teach you about British English pronunciation. |
| Gina: British English has many different accents and dialects, but the basic pronunciation is the same. We will discuss those differences in more detail in a later lesson though. |
| Gabriella: In this lesson specifically, we will tell you how to pronounce consonants. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Gina: So, the English alphabet is based on the Roman, or Latin alphabet, right? |
| Gabriella: That’s right. It’s used for many different languages across the world, so even non-native English speakers could be familiar with it. |
| Gina: It has 26 letters – of these, five are vowels and twenty one are consonants. |
| Gabriella: Yes, and it’s those 21 consonants that will be the stars of this lesson. |
| Gina: If there are 21 consonants, does that mean that there are 21 sounds? |
| Gabriella: No, it’s not as straightforward as that. |
| Gina: I didn’t think it would be! |
| Gabriella: We will be looking at 24 consonant sounds in this lesson. |
| Gina: There is also the issue that not every consonant in a word is voiced. |
| Gabriella: That’s right. Some words have double consonants such as “account”, which is spelt A-C-C-O-U-N-T, and others have completely silent consonants. |
| Gina: Like “knee”, which is a part of your leg. That’s spelt K-N-E-E but the “k” is completely silent. |
| Gabriella: That’s right. We call consonants closed sounds because when we speak them, we stop the flow of air in some way. |
| Gina: Okay. That’s a lot of background on consonants. Let’s move on and talk about the pronunciation of them. |
| Gabriella: What’s first? |
| Gina: There’s the “p” sound in words such as “pull” |
| Gabriella: And “push”. Then the “f” in words such as “food”. |
| Gina: And “four”. Next, the “t” in “tree” and “talk”. |
| Gabriella: The “s” in “stop”. |
| Gina: And “start”. Then, the “k” sound in “cup” and “kick”. |
| Gabriella: Even though “cup” is spelt with a “c”, it still sounds more like a harsh “k” sound. |
| Gina: Next up, the “b” in “ball” and “boy”. |
| Gabriella: This next one can be tricky sometimes – the “v” in “vote” and “voice”. |
| Gina: The “d” sound that begins “daughter” and “door”. |
| Gabriella: The “j” in “joke” and “join”. |
| Gina: The “z” in “zoo” and “noise”. |
| Gabriella: Again, “noise” is spelt with an “s”, but “s” is often pronounced with more of a “zee” sound. |
| Gina: That’s right. |
| Gabriella: Then, the “szh” sound in “pleasure” and “casual”. |
| Gina: The harsh “g” that begins “girl” and “garden”. |
| Gabriella: The “h” that begins “head” and “heart”. |
| Gina: The “m” in “money” and “meat”. |
| Gabriella: The “n” in “night” and “nurse”. |
| Gina: The “ng” in “English” and “sing” |
| Gabriella: The “r” in “rule” and “road”. |
| Gina: The “l” in “love” and “letter”. |
| Gabriella: Don’t mix the “r” and “l” sounds up! |
| Gina: The “w” in “want” and “where”. |
| Gabriella: The “y” in “year” and “yellow”. |
| Gina: The soft “th” in “thigh” and “thought”. |
| Gabriella: Which is completely different to the harsher “th” in “there” and “they”, even though they are both spelt T-H. |
| Gina: The “ch” that begins “chair” and “child”. |
| Gabriella: And finally, the “sh” that begins “shoe” and “shot”. |
| Gina: Finished! That was a long list! |
| Gabriella: Yeah, it was! We picked out a few important points as went along, but I hope our listeners were able to pick up some of the similar sounds. |
| Gina: Yeah, the “s” and “z” sounds are similar – “start” and “zoo”. |
| Gabriella: The main difference when pronouncing the two is in the vocal chords – you use them for “z”, but not for “s”. |
| Gina: Yes, the tongue positioning and everything is the same, so they can be tricky for non-natives to separate. |
| Gabriella: It’s the same with the “d” and “t” sounds. “D” is voiced like “z”, so the vocal chords come into play whereas “t”, like “s”, isn’t voiced. |
| Gina: Can you give us an example of the “d” and “t” sounds? |
| Gabriella: How about “duck” and “took”? Although they’re spelt differently, they sound very similar other than for that opening sound. |
| Gina: The “d” sound is harsher and louder than the “t” sound is. That’s the difference the vocal chords make, isn’t it? |
| Gabriella: That’s right. So when speaking English, we have to think about mouth shape, tongue position, and our vocal chords. It sounds like a lot, but it soon becomes second nature. |
Outro |
| Gina: Okay, that’s all for consonants, and for this lesson. |
| Gabriella: Thanks for listening, and see you next time. |
| Gina: See you! |
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