Youll see more of this afterwards in other sections

You'll see more of this afterwards, in other sections, since I'll keep repeating myself. If
you don't understand the concept of phoneme, you'd better keep trying.
V
OWELS VS
.
CONSONANTS
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Conlangs DE-Cal – Spring 2006
The sounds used in any language can be divided (generally) into consonants and vowels .
This division is not necessarily universal; in many languages some "consonants" like r,
m, n, l, are actually vowels (this is, they are treated as syllable nuclei, can be stressed, or
lengthened, etc.). For example, Sanskrit has syllabic l and r (as in R gveda ); and Japanese
syllable-final n is syllabic (actually "moraic", but that's a distinction I won't explain here).
The division between vowels and consonants is a matter of closure: the more closed the
air passages are, the more consonantic a sound is. We will examine the different kinds of
sounds using this scale.
C
ONSONANTS
Sounds vary along dimensions . These represent ranges of possible features, or yes-no
features. Each language has a phonology with one or more dimensions within which
sounds are placed and recognized. One important dimension is the degree of closure .
According to this, consonants can be classified into:

Stops : the airflow is completely stopped for a moment, and then released, to
produce the sound. The sounds p, k, b, d in English pin, king, ban, dad are stops.

Fricatives : the airflow is not completely stopped, but it causes an audible friction.
For example: English s , sh , v , German ch as in Achtung, Ich, München .

Approximants : the airflow is barely modified at all. For example: English w, l, r,
y .
Also an affricate is a stop plus a fricative occurring in the same place of articulation, like
English ch (which can be analyzed as t + sh ) or German z (pronounced
/ts/
).
A click is a sound produced by placing the tongue in position for a stop while there's a
second closure somewhere else, accumulating pressure and then releasing the closure (see
below).
Then there's the place of articulation , this is, where the obstruction or modulation of the
airflow occurs. According to this, consonants can be:

Labial : formed by the lips ( w, p ), or by the lips and the tongue ( f , also called
labio-dental)

Dental : between the teeth and the tongue ( th , French or Spanish t )

Alveolar : in the alveola, the place right behind the teeth ( s , English t , Spanish r )

Alveolo-palatal : further back from the teeth ( sh , ch ), with the body of the tongue
retracted towards the palate.

Palatal : at the top of the palate (Russian ch , Spanish ñ as in niño )

Retroflex : with the tip of tongue curled backwards, its underside touching the
border of the hard palate (American r , in many dialects; in Sanskrit there's a
complete series of retroflex consonants (which are called cerebral ), which
parallels the alveolar series t, d, n, s ).

Velar : at the back of the mouth ( k , ng as in sing )
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