The English Consonant Sounds
The English language has 24 consonant sounds. This includes plosives, fricatives, affricates, laterals. nasals and approximants.
While all the sounds of English require attention, over the years, I’ve noticed that there are specific consonant sounds that can be extremely challenging for non-native English speakers. Here I’m going to take a look at a few of these sounds, explain why they are difficult and how to fix the problem. The mistake that a lot of students make is that they tend to assume they can articulate the sounds correctly when in reality they are over compensating by substituting the target sound with the closest available sound from the phonology of their native language.
We need to understand that the way we use the articulators (the mouth, lips, tongue, teeth, vocal cords, etc) differs from language to language. Just because the same phonetic symbol exists in two different languages, this doesn’t mean that they are articulated in the same manner. We can see some very subtle differences in sounds when comparing the IPA of American English and Received Pronunciation.
The /w/ & /v/ Sounds
The /w/ sound is perhaps one of the most challenging consonant sounds in the English language. Many non-native English speakers across the globe, including those whose first languages are Japanese, Turkish, Russian, French, and Farsi, find this particular sound challenging to pronounce.
But why? First of all many languages do not distinuish between /w/ and /v/. The /w/ sound is an approximant, that means that we round the lips but there isn’t any contact between the articulators. On the other hand, the /v/ sound is a fricative whereby the top teeth make contact with the bottom lip as air passes through.
Secondly, the /w/ sound isn’t just a matter of rounding the lips. The /w/ sound of English requires careful precision compared to other languages. Let’s take the word “oui” in French which is pronounced with a /w/ sound. The French /w/ sound is not as precise as the British /w/ sound. The lips of the British /w/ sound requires a tighter rounding of the lips and more resonance as the sound travels through the lips.
The solution is to first develop a clear distincting between between /w/ and /v/. Then work on your muscle memory through slow and controlled movements to articulate the /w/ sound in a more precise manner. This takes time and attention. Don’t aim for speed, aim for precision.
The Cluster Sounds /kw/, /tw/ & /sw/
Even after developing confidence in articulating the /w/ sound in isolation, non-native English speakers can still struggle with the /w/ sound as part of a cluster sound.
Again, these are sounds that do not exist in many other languages so the student is not used to positioning the articulators correctly. For examplel, the /kw/ sound is a combination of the voiceess velar plosive /k/ and the voiced approximant /w/. In other words the /kw/ sound is a combination of two sounds which should be articulated in consecutive order. The gap between the two sounds is so minimal minimal that they are perceived to being articulated at the same time. However, in the reality there is a very short pause that’s barely noticeable.
The /θ/ & /ð/ Sounds
The /θ/ & /ð/ sounds are voiceless and voiced fricatives respectively. Non-native English speakers can struggle with these sounds as they do not exist in their native language. Often they’ll substitute these sounds for /s/ & /z/.
To articulate these sounds correctly, it’s important to make sufficient contact between the articulators (the top front teeth and the tongue). Students are often not used to making contact in this manner as the idea of brushing the tongue with the top front teeth is alien in their own language.
The solution here is to practise making slow and careful contact with the articulators. During the early stages it’s important to focus on the basic articulation, the resonance rather than words and phrases.
The sounds /θ/ (as in “thing”) and /ð/ (as in “this”) are relatively rare across the world’s languages. Many languages do not have these sounds. Here are some examples:
- Most Germanic languages (except English and Icelandic): German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, etc., do not have /θ/ or /ð/. They typically replace these sounds with /t/, /d/, /f/, or /v/ when speaking languages like English.
- Romance languages: French, Italian, Portuguese, and most varieties of Spanish (with the notable exception of Peninsular Spanish, which has /θ/ but not /ð/ universally and /ð/ as an allophone of /d/) do not have these sounds.
- Slavic languages: Russian, Polish, Czech, etc.
- Many Asian languages: Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Burmese, etc.
- Most African languages.
- Many varieties of Arabic: While Modern Standard Arabic has both /θ/ and /ð/, many modern vernacular varieties, like Egyptian Arabic, do not.
- Finnish
- Hungarian
- Turkish
- Malay (though it might appear in Arabic loanwords, often replaced with /s/ or /z/)