Phonation

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Phonation
Voiced vs. Voiceless
Phonation Pairs in English
Phonation in Your Target Language
In English
In Spanish
In French

Remember our old friend, the glottis?

The glottis is at the top of your windpipe and made up of two snotty folds of

mucous membrane known as the vocal cords. As mentioned before, these

vocal cords open up when you breathe to let air pass through.

When you contract the muscles in your throat to bring your vocal

cords together, they start to vibrate. The resulting sound is your voice! The

presence or absence of voicing is the third major defining feature of

consonants, and the technical term for it is phonation.

Voiced vs. Voiceless
 When your vocal cords are vibrating, the phonation of that consonant
is voiced.
 When your vocal cords are NOT vibrating, the phonation of that consonant
is voiceless.
Some pairs of consonant sounds already have the same place and manner of

articulation. In these cases, the phonation is what makes them different.

Phonation Pairs in English

Below, I list all the phonation pairs of English consonants. In these pairs, the

first consonant sound is voiceless while the second is voiced.

As you follow along, try to make these sounds out loud to feel the

difference.

[Bilabial] [Stop]

/p/ vs. /b/

“pat” vs. “bat”

[Velar] [Stop]

/k/ vs /g/

“card” vs. “guard”

[Dental] [Fricative]

/θ/ vs. /ð/

“thigh” vs. “thy”

[Interdental] [Fricative]

/f/ vs. /v/

“fat” vs. “vat”

[Alveolar] [Stop]

/t/ vs. /d/

“tire” vs. “dire”

[Alveolar] [Fricative]

/s/ vs. /z/

“sit” vs. “zit”

[Post-Alveolar] [Fricative]

/ʃ/ vs. /ʒ/

“fishin’” vs. “fission”

[Post-Alveolar] [Affricate]

/tʃ/ vs. /dʒ/

“batch” vs. “badge”

Phonation in Your Target Language

In some languages, the difference between a voiced and unvoiced consonant

results in a difference in meaning. In other languages, this is not the case. If

you are learning another language, you may not be able to hear the difference

initially. 

But that’s just on the perception side. There is still a question of developing

the coordination needed to produce these sounds.

I have found that in general, students have more difficulty

producing voicedconsonants in their target language.

This makes sense when you think about it, as the vibration of vocal cords

means voiced consonants need more coordination than voiceless ones.

IN ENGLISH
Imagine that you are a native Spanish speaker who is learning English. In

Spanish, there is the voiceless /s/, but its voiced equal /z/ does NOT yet exist

for that person. So the native Spanish will struggle at hearing the difference

between the words “zap” and “sap.” That’s part of the reason why native

Spanish speakers always tend to mispronounce these sounds in colloquial

English.

But as I have said before, anyone can learn to appreciate any sound with

enough targeted exposure. If the Spanish speaker practices

hearing “zap/sap”, “sit/zit”, “sag/zag” enough times, eventually they will start to

notice the difference.  

IN SPANISH
For example, many Spanish learners struggle with the alveolar trill – /r/. You

create this by guiding air over the tongue at just the right speed so that the

tongue starts to vibrate on its own.

I have a “bootcamp” section dedicated to the Spanish alveolar sounds in

my Spanish Master Class, and I find that most people first breakthrough with

this sound is with the voiceless trill. 

Once they master the articulation of the voiceless trill, the next task is to

coordinate the trill movement with voicing. 

IN FRENCH
The exact same problem arises for French learners on a different consonant-

the Uvular Fricative.

The uvula is a place of articulation not relevant to English (it’s that dangly

thing at the back of your throat).

French has both voiced and voiceless fricative sounds that occur here.