Contrasts in English Pronunciation: Voiced and Voiceless Consonants

English pronunciation is full of contrasts.  Let’s explore voiced and voiceless consonants.

Most consonants come in pairs.  This can be illustrated by the fact that certain consonants seem to be replaced in predictable ways.  For instance, the /F/ in wolf changes to /v/ in the plural wolves.  It is also no accident that the final s in shoes sounds like z, and it is also interesting to note that Arabic speakers, who don’t have /P/, always replace it with /B/.

SEE ALSO: Most Frequently Mispronounced English Nouns

But how do we account for this? One might conclude that s and z, f and v, and p and b are related in some way, a conclusion which would be correct.  Linguists refer to the first member of each of these pairs as a voiceless consonant, and the second is called a voiced consonant.  These will be the subject of the following paragraphs.

So What’s the Difference?

The only difference between a voiced and voiceless consonant is that pronouncing the voiced member of a pair involves resonation of the vocal chords.

Z is therefore exactly the same as s except that the vocal chords are “turned on” during the former’s articulation.

You can check to see if the vocal chords are being used by placing your hand over your throat and feeling the vibration.

Consonants that come in these related pairs are called obstruents.  There is also a group of English consonants that are never voiceless, namely /r/, /l/, /n/ and /m/.  In fact, this group seems to always be voiced throughout all of the world’s languages (with a few exceptions).  These consonants are called sonorants, and if you are wondering why they usually can’t be voiceless, try making an m sound without using your vocal chords.  You will see!

How Do Voiced and Voiceless Consonants Affect ESL Students and their English Pronunciation?

As regards second-language acquisition, the problems related to voiced/voiceless pairs can be divided into three main types, which will be outlined below.

1.  The learner’s native language lacks one member of a pair

Some languages simply have only one member of a given voiced/voiceless pair.  A well-known example of this is Spanish, which does not have /Z/.  Spanish speakers therefore use /S/ for both /S/ and /Z/, which leads to results such as “seal” instead of “zeal”.  The Arabic /b/ mentioned above is another example.  English speakers learning Ukrainian face a similar problem; it has a voiced version of English /H/, which is hard for us to pronounce!

2.  English spelling uses one letter for both members of a pair

The pair of consonants represented in English by th, /TH/ and /DH/, can cause problems for learners simply because there’s just that one digraph for both sounds.  A student might therefore say ether instead of either.

3.  English spelling has a separate letter for each member, but doesn’t use them consistently

Since voiced/voiceless pairs of consonants are so ­closely related, sometimes one gets exchanged for the other.  While this isn’t necessarily a problem in itself, the change is not always reflected in a word’s spelling.  A well-known example of this phenomenon is the plural ending –s.

In practice, this ending is pronounced both /S/ and /Z/, but only the letter s is used to spell it.  Another common example of this is the medial /T/ in American English, found in words such as water.  In certain environments, such as between vowels, it is pronounced a lot like /D/.  Bitter and bidder therefore sound the same.