Manner of articulation

One way of classifying consonants is by noting how they are produced - the manner of articulation. There are two main groups.

• stops are consonants that block the air-stream. There are total closures and partial closures.
  • total closures include plosives (e.g. the bilabials p' and b and the alveolars t and d and nasals, where the flow through the mouth is interrupted, but the air passes through the nose
  • partial closures include the tap and trill: the letter r tends to be pronounced as a tapped r in England and the United States, but as a trilled r in Scotland, and in many non-English languages. In laterals such as l, the tongue partially blocks the flow of air through the centre of the mouth, forcing it to the sides.
• continuants (sometimes called spirants) are consonants that do not stop the air-stream, but modify it to produce an audible sound by friction of the air stream.
  • fricatives are consonants where the sound can be prolonged, rather like a vowel. Most continuants in English are fricatives, like f, v, th and h.
    • a particular group of fricatives is sometimes called the sibilants: those that sound like a snake's hiss: the post-alveolar s and z, and the palato-alveolar sh and zh.

Affricates are a combination of a stop consonant and a continuant, as in ch, which in most English occurrences has a -t- stop which flows straight into a -sh-, and j (rendered more correctly dzh, but never spelled this way in English), which goes from a d to a zh.

There are also some phonemes conventionally listed as consonants in English which share some of the characteristics of vowels. In some languages, indeed, they are sometimes classified as vowels. These are known in English a semi-vowels or glides. Consonantal y and w are close to the vowels i and u.

All the speech sounds in English are normally 'egressive pulmonic' (made with the regular air stream breathed out from the lungs). In other languages, other manners of articulation are used: some use the air stream while breathing in ('ingressive pulmonic'). Some of these have implosive stops. Other languages, notably in southern Africa, make use of clicks as speech sounds.