What is a consonant

About this Video:

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.

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And be sure to check out this other post:

5 British Pronunciation Hacks: How To Bridge The Gap Between Spellings And Speech

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[pinkmonster]

If you guys don't understand, there are vowels, (a, e, i, o, u) consonants are the word that aren't a, e, i, o, u that is in the aphlabet .

[williamsaltsman]

OMG!
I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE HAS DEVELOPED TO THIS LEVEL. I AM COMPLETELY MEZMERIZED TO THE EXTREME!!! THIS IS SOOOO FRIKIN COOL!!!

[michaeljfreeman]

Thank you for the now this is home education rather than AT GOVERNMENT SCHOOLING as we can see and tell in the chat box that we don't learn the basics at the most important ones of all, the social aspect .... Thank you once again... and now the youngones like Ciren Rose will have pride and this will grow and here comes Articulate & Confident our talents all round the board. Linda POW

[cirenrose]

Im 14 and i am a english speaker. And i forget what consonants and vowels and verbs and stuff like that are.

[MohammedEssam-ienx]

Thank you so much sir !
You have helped me a lot, I'm a freshman in the English department and I've suffered a lot with differentiating between vowels and consonants, I've finally understood them after watching your videos
Thank you so much again.

[nuranozdil]

Your pronounciation delecious and also you.Very soft pronouncotion.

[artist-scopes]

I'm here as I'm learning Korean, just to see if I can understand consonants better.

[guipe]

It's just a joy to hear such beautiful and clear English!
Thank you for sharing!

[rabeyabegumnowrin]

Very nice. Go ahead and All the best 👍🥺🤗. You love your own work for every time.

[Daisy-jwei]

I needed to learn this so I can do my English homework

[gnurtaedd]

don't really think this is necessary for an English learner but definitely very helpful for me, as a linguistics learner.
your explanation clears it up a lot, thanks so

[IStarscream_]

Thank you so much for this!! I'm an English speaker learning French but have to touch up on some of this before I can get started. So helpful!

[Jeremy-zqsr]

Excellent video! Thank you for your help.

[sevilla]

Very helpful for my phonetics class. Thanks!

[zephaniahjessica]

Thank you so much Sir, I have learnt a lot.

[blacklightning]

Funny part is I dont remember anyone explaining this to me and I didnt know what vowels or consanants were until now yet I still speak fluent english XD

[hannalin]

It's very useful! Thank you very much!

[varunrajrcae]

Very informative and good presentation
From India

[nicolamuszalska]

Thank you, you helped me in homework today :)

[dreamergirlz]

So I’m trying to learn a new language and it was like “let’s learn the consonants” I heard that word before but when I looked it up apparently I was never even taught about this in school... and I still don’t understand what it is even after watching this video😂😂