What are Consonant Sounds?
What are Consonant sounds? Confused...no need to be....let's put it all in
context for you:
- There are 44 sounds (19 + 25) that make up the sounds of our
English language.
-
19 of the sounds we refer to as vowel
sounds (because they use the vowels a, e, i, o, u or make the sounds of
our vowels)
-
25 of the sounds we refer to as consonant sounds (see
below - notice that there are no vowels)
-
Each individual sound is sometimes referred to as a grapheme
or phoneme.
-
We use the letters of the alphabet
to write sounds down.
-
There are over 70 ways to spell these sounds, which we refer
to as phonograms
Remember consonants are all the letters that are NOT vowels!
Easy eh! (Vowels for those of you who are really rusty are: a,e,i,o,u)
|
/b/ as in bib |
/d/ as
in pond |
/f/ as
in laugh |
/g/ as in pig |
| /h/ as
in hop |
/j/ as in jam |
/k/ as in king |
/l/ as in hall |
| /m/ as in
thumb |
/n/ as in pen |
/p/ as
in pop |
/r/ as in car |
|
/s/ as in sent |
/t/ as
in tent |
/v/ as in hive |
/w/ as in window |
|
/y/ as in yell |
/z/ as in zip |
/ch/ as in chip |
/sh/ as in sheep |
|
/zh/ as in Asia |
/th/ as in the |
/th/ as in thing |
/hw/ wheat |
|
/ng/ as in ring
|
25 CONSONANT SOUNDS |
A common mistake is to pronounce a "huh" after
letters. For example for the letter /s/ we say /ssssssssss/ and not
/suh/. Look at the examples given above and try to isolate the actual
sounds to give you a more accurate representation.
What about the letters /c/, /q/, & /x/ ?
You may have noticed that the letters
/c/, /q/, /x/
do not have a phoneme listed; your child will still learn these
sounds, but they are not listed as a pure phoneme because the sounds that they
represent can be represented by other letters or spellings.
For example:
-
the letter c can be represented by the phonemes /k/ or /s/
as in cent
-
the letter x as in fox can be represented by two phonemes
/ks/
-
the letter q can be represented by two phonemes /kw/
Leave consonant sounds and listen to the vowel sounds that make up the 44 sounds of the English Language
|
