Deaf and voiced consonants

A person's speech consists of a set of consecutive sounds. The two main groups - consonants and vowels - are divided according to the principle of articulation. Consonant sounds are sounds that, when pronounced, a stream of air exhaled by the lungs, meets on its way possible obstacles in the mouth - it can be a tongue, teeth, and palate, and lips. This explains the origin of consonant sounds. Some consonants, forming, use vocal cords, and others - no. So, in the Russian language, deaf and sonorous consonants are distinguished. If the consonant is formed only by noise, then it will be deaf. And if in his education participate in To varying degrees, both noise and voice, this consonant is called sonorous. We can easily notice the difference in the pair "voiceless and voiced consonants" if we put our hand to the larynx. If we call sonorous consonants, there is a shiver, a vibration of the vocal cords. Since the ligaments are tense, the air exhaled by the lungs causes them to oscillate and set in motion. And if you say a deaf sound, the ligaments will be in a calm, relaxed state, which is why a certain kind of noise is formed. In addition, if voiced consonants are pronounced, our speech organs experience somewhat less tension than when hearing deaf sounds.

Some consonants - sonorous and deaf - form the so-called pairs. Such sounds are called paired voiced and voiceless consonants. In order to facilitate the memorization of deaf consonants as much as possible, a special phrase-formula (the mnemonic rule) is used: "Styopka, do you want a chef? Fii!" This sentence contains all the deaf consonants.

And some of the sounds do not have a pair of voiceless voiced consonants. These include:

[Л], [м], [н], [р], [й] [л '], [м'], [н '], [р'] - sonorous

[Ц], [х], [ш: '] [ч], [х'] - the deaf ones

In addition, the following sounds [w], [w], [w], [x] are called sibilant, and [p], [m], [n], [n] - sonorous. They are close to vowel sounds and can form syllables.

The first row consists of consonants, called sonorous, which translates from Greek as "sonorous". That is, when they are formed above the noise, the voice predominates. And in the second row of consonants, on the contrary, noise dominates.

One of the principles of modern Russian orthoepy (a section of phonetics, which deals with the study of the norms of literary pronunciation) is that voiced consonants take on the appearance of the deaf, and the deaf people are likened to voices in oral speech. Voiced consonant sounds (except for sonorous sounds) are pronounced as deaf at the end of the word or just before another deaf sound: the code is ko [t]. And deaf consonants acquire the sign of voicedness, if they are in front of a sonorous consonant sound and begin to be pronounced sonically: grind [young], give up [s] give. Only before the consonant [in], as well as before the sonorous, the deaf do not become sonorous.

Deaf and sonorous consonants create certain difficulties for us when writing. In accordance with the morphological principle of the spelling of our language, neither deafening nor voicing can be expressed by writing. So, in order to check the paired voiced or voiceless consonants standing in the middle of a word or on the end before another consonant, it is necessary to select such one- root words or to change the word so that after a consonant sound there was a vowel: lo [w] ka - a spoon, Gra [t] - hail, horse [t] ka - horse.