What is Devoicing? | Devoicing of Final consonants - English Phonology

Billie English - the YouTube channel to help you improve your English pronunciation, speaking and fluency! Billie is a certified CELTA English teacher trainer and has over 17 years of teaching experience. Learn about devoicing of sounds in English in this video.

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★★ TIME STAMPS ★★
0:00 Intro: Revision of voiced & unvoiced sounds
2:49 Devoicing of final consonants
4:10 Example 1
6:08 Minimal Pairs & Devoicing
7:43 Devoicing & Pre-fortis clipping
10:11 Example 2

★★ WHAT THIS VIDEO IS ABOUT★★
This video gives you a quick overview of devoicing in English. To recap, all sounds of English can be put into two groups: voiced sounds & unvoiced sounds. They could be anywhere in the word. However, you might have noticed that often sounds at the end of words and sentences become unvoiced. This is called devoicing. Formerly voiced sounds, change and lose their voicing if they are followed by silence or an unvoiced sound. This process actually helps us speak faster because we don’t have to use our vocal cords to produce the sound, so it’s less effort 🙂
In the video we also discuss how we can tell the difference in minimal pairs affected by devoicing, and we discover what pre fortis clipping is - it’s not as complicated as it sounds, I promise!

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Billie is a pronunciation coach and content creator based in Barcelona, Spain. Her main focus is English pronunciation, phonology and helping learners speak more fluently. Billie has a degree in Communication Research & Phonology, a PGCE in Primary Education, a Trinity College Cert & DiplomaTESOL and over 17 years of teaching experience. She also works as a CELTA teacher trainer, Cambridge examiner and educational advisor. Her videos have been featured in the Google funded AI app ELSA speak.

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#devoicing #phonology

[BillieEnglish]

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[olgayaresko]

Could you explain more about pre-fortis clipping? It's new for me and I'm unfamiliar with this term.

[erickan]

Now I understand why we never devoice the second syllable of the word ’Disease’ /dɪˈziːz/.

I can never thank you enough for such a clear and thorough explanation!

[alexgrishin]

Very interesting topic! Not so often seen. Excellent explanation! Thank you a lot!

[DarckAngel]

As much as I study about pronunciation I find more and more details. I ended up here because I noticed that in words like achieve, perceive, live receive when you add a s should sound like vz at the end, but I hear fs instead. Pls let me know if I am wrong or this actually happens. I think they made the rules for us, and they made exceptions for them; then they sound smoother😂😂

[ucnguyenvan]

Wow I’ve been wondering this matter since the day I learned The English phonetic alphabet. Thanks so much!

[JuanFlores-lohf]

How common is the devoicing of voiced consonants at the end of the sentence? Thanks for your beautiful lessons!

[yangyang]

Wonderful video, learned so much. Thanks a lot!

[marylouvercellotti]

Great content in this video! The use of slash brackets is perhaps misleading because often sounds are written in square brackets. /g/ --> [k]

[angieee]

very good video, thank you very much, if you don't mind, could you make a video about content and function words? please

[thecuriousone]

Hello! I was taught that devoicing should not take place in English. Only in the words, like, "have to \ has to \ used to". So, the difference between BAG and BACK must be retained. So, \b\ doesn't become \p\, it's just pronounced less energetically, if it makes sense.

[renatamachado]

Can you please teach about Devoiced Approximats.

[Ricardo-xggx]

My first approach has been quite interesting. However, the second part of the video requires a rewatching once more at least.

[cmtwei]

I don't think devoiced g sounds very similar to k, there's still more turbulence sound or air expelled in k, unless I've been mispronouncing it.

[MohamedMohamed-futp]

Even it's clear but still not able to understand it can give us other examples