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The International Phonetic Alphabet has distinct letters for many voiceless and voiced pairs of consonants (the obstruents), such as [p b], [t d], [k ɡ], [q ɢ]. In addition, there is a diacritic for voicedness: ̬ . Diacritics are typically used with letters for prototypically voiceless sounds.
Most commonly, the change is a result of sound assimilation with an adjacent sound of opposite voicing, but it can also occur word-finally or in contact with a specific vowel. For example, the English suffix -s is pronounced [s] when it follows a voiceless phoneme (cats), and [z] when it follows a voiced phoneme (dogs). [1]
The following table shows the 24 consonant phonemes found in most dialects of English, plus /x/, whose distribution is more limited. Fortis consonants are always voiceless, aspirated in syllable onset (except in clusters beginning with /s/ or /ʃ/), and sometimes also glottalized to an extent in syllable coda (most likely to occur with /t/, see T-glottalization), while lenis consonants are ...
So-called voiced aspirated consonants are nearly always pronounced instead with breathy voice, a type of phonation or vibration of the vocal folds. The modifier letter ʰ after a voiced consonant actually represents a breathy-voiced or murmured consonant, as with the "voiced aspirated" bilabial stop bʰ in the Indo-Aryan languages.
Pulmonic consonant letters are arranged singly or in pairs of voiceless and voiced sounds, with these then grouped in columns from front (labial) sounds on the left to back (glottal) sounds on the right. In official publications by the IPA, two columns are omitted to save space, with the letters listed among "other symbols" even though ...
In English, every voiced fricative corresponds to a voiceless one. For the pairs of English stops , however, the distinction is better specified as voice onset time rather than simply voice: In initial position, /b d g/ are only partially voiced (voicing begins during the hold of the consonant), and /p t k/ are aspirated (voicing begins only ...
Sonorants are sounds such as vowels and nasals that are voiced in most of the world's languages. However, in some languages sonorants may be voiceless, usually allophonically. For example, the Japanese word sukiyaki is pronounced [sɯ̥kijaki] and may sound like [skijaki] to an English speaker, but the lips can be seen to compress for the [ɯ̥].
The following are the non-pulmonic consonants.They are sounds whose airflow is not dependent on the lungs. These include clicks (found in the Khoisan languages and some neighboring Bantu languages of Africa), implosives (found in languages such as Sindhi, Hausa, Swahili and Vietnamese), and ejectives (found in many Amerindian and Caucasian languages).