How to identify voiceless and voiced consonants. Hard and soft consonants

A sound is the smallest unit of language, pronounced with the help of organs. speech apparatus. Scientists have discovered that at birth, human hearing perceives all the sounds that it hears. All this time, his brain sorts out unnecessary information, and by 8-10 months a person is able to distinguish sounds that are unique to his native language, and all the nuances of pronunciation.

33 letters make up the Russian alphabet, 21 of them are consonants, but letters should be distinguished from sounds. A letter is a sign, a symbol that can be seen or written. The sound can only be heard and pronounced, and in writing it can be designated using transcription - [b], [c], [d]. They carry a certain semantic load, connecting with each other, form words.

36 consonants: [b], [h], [c], [d], [g], [g], [m], [n], [k], [l], [t], [p ], [t], [s], [u], [f], [c], [w], [x], [h], [b "], [h "], [c"], [ d "], [th"], [n"], [k"], [m"], [l"], [t"], [s"], [n"], [r"], [ f "], [g"], [x"].

The consonants are divided into:

soft and hard;

voiced and deaf;

paired and unpaired.

Soft and hard consonants

The phonetics of the Russian language has a significant difference from many other languages. It contains hard and soft consonants.

At the moment of pronouncing a soft sound, the tongue is pressed against the palate more strongly than when pronouncing a hard consonant sound, preventing the release of air. This is what distinguishes a hard and soft consonant from each other. In order to determine in a letter whether a consonant is soft or hard, you should look at the letter immediately after a particular consonant.

Consonants are classified as solid in such cases:

if letters a, o, u, uh, s follow after them - [poppy], [rum], [hum], [juice], [bull];
after them there is another consonant sound - [pile], [hail], [marriage];
if the sound is at the end of the word - [gloom], [friend], [table].

The softness of the sound is written as an apostrophe: mol - [mol '], chalk - [m'el], gate - [kal'itka], fir - [p'ir].

It should be noted that the sounds [u ’], [d ’], [h ’] are always soft, and hard consonants are only [w], [c], [g].

The consonant sound will become soft if it is followed by "b" and vowels: i, e, u, i, e. For example: gene - [g "en], len - [l" he], disk - [d "isk] , hatch - [l "uk], elm - [v" yaz], trill - [tr "el"].

Voiced and deaf, paired and unpaired sounds

According to the voicedness, consonants are divided into voiced and deaf. Voiced consonants can be sounds created with the participation of the voice: [c], [h], [g], [b], [g], [d], [m], [d], [l], [p] , [n].

Examples: [boron], [ox], [shower], [call], [heat], [head], [catch], [pestilence], [nose], [genus], [swarm].

Examples: [count], [floor], [volume], [dream], [noise], [u "uk], [choir], [king"], [ch "an].

Paired voiced and deaf consonants include: [b] - [n], [g] - [w], [g] - [x], [h] - [s]. [d] - [t], [c] - [f]. Examples: true story - dust, house - volume, year - code, vase - phase, itching - court, live - sew.

Sounds that do not form a pair: [h], [n], [c], [x], [p], [m], [l].

Soft and hard consonants can also have a pair: [p] - [p "], [n] - [n"], [m] - [m"], [c] - [c"], [d] - [ d "], [f] - [f "], [k] - [k"], [h] - [h "], [b] - [b"], [g] - [g"], [ n] - [n "], [s] - [s"], [l] - [l "], [t] - [t"], [x] - [x"]. Examples: true story - white, height - branch, city - cheetah, cottage - business, umbrella - zebra, skin - cedar, moon - summer, monster - place, finger - pen, ore - river, soda - sulfur, pillar - steppe, lantern - farm, mansions - hut.

Table for memorizing consonants

To visually see and compare soft and hard consonants, the table below shows them in pairs.

Table. Consonants: hard and soft

Solid - before the letters A, O, U, S, E Soft - before the letters I, E, E, Yu, I	Hard and soft consonants
	b	ball	b"	battle
	in	howl	in"	eyelid
	G	garage	G"	hero
	d	hole	d"	tar
	h	ash	h"	yawn
	to	godfather	to"	sneakers
	l	vine	l"	foliage
	m	March	m"	month
	n	leg	n"	tenderness
	P	spider	P"	song
	R	growth	R"	rhubarb
	With	salt	With"	hay
	t	cloud	t"	patience
	f	phosphorus	f"	firm
	X	thinness	X"	chemistry
Unpaired	and	giraffe	h	miracle
	sh	screen	sch	hazel
	c	goal	th	felt

Another table will help memorize consonant sounds.

Table. Consonants: voiced and voiceless

Paired	voiced	Deaf
	B	P
	AT	F
	G	To
	D	T
	AND	W
	W	FROM
Unpaired	L, M, N, R, Y	X, C, H, W

Children's poems for better mastering of the material

The letters are exactly 33 in the Russian alphabet,

To find out how many consonants -

Subtract ten vowels

Signs - hard, soft -

It will immediately become clear:

It turns out the number is exactly twenty-one.

Soft and hard consonants are very different,

But not dangerous at all.

If we pronounce with noise, then they are deaf.

Consonant sounds proudly say:

They sound different.

Hard and soft

Actually very light.

One simple rule to remember forever:

W, C, F - always solid,

But H, W, Y - only soft,

Like cat paws.

Let's soften the others like this:

If we add soft sign,

Then we get spruce, moth, salt,

What a clever sign!

And if we add the vowels I, I, E, E, Yu,

We get a soft consonant.

Signs-brothers, soft, hard,

We don't pronounce

But to change the word

Let's ask for their help.

The rider is riding a horse

Kon - use in the game.

Every first grader knows that sound is a unit of speech that we pronounce and hear, and letters we read and write. They in Russian are divided into vowels and consonants. Of the 33 letters of the Russian alphabet, 21 are called consonants. They are divided by sonority and deafness, softness and hardness. To study the classification of letters begins with grade 1, but the student will have to use it until graduation. When studying phonetics, each student must learn to distinguish voiceless sounds from voiced ones. During writing, they are indicated by transcription - [b]. The table will help to distinguish and remember paired consonant sounds.

Paired consonants by voiced-deafness

All consonants in Russian form pairs, a voiced consonant is opposed to a deaf one. There are 12 paired letters in total, 6 pairs are obtained:

Paired and unpaired consonants need to be known in order to be successful in spelling. Many orthograms of the Russian language are based on the selection of cognate words according to this classification, for example:

soft - soft
tooth teeth.

The first pair contains the letter g, which is indistinctly heard during pronunciation and its spelling brings difficulty. The second words are test words when the spelling is pronounced clearly. Younger students often make mistakes in these works.

You may notice that not all letters of the alphabet form pairs. This happens due to the fact that in phonetics there are rules that must be remembered. They are based on the fact that sounds can only be voiced or only deaf. It is easy to remember them, since they have a small amount. As a rule, students by the end of grade 1 know them by heart. These include p, n, l, m, d - sonorous, always voiced, c, h, w, x - always deaf.

Paired consonants by softness-hardness

Consonants are usually divided into hard and soft. In phonetics, the softening process occurs in several situations:

when there is a vowel after the consonant: u, i, e, e, and (blizzard, buttercup);
or there is a soft sign (blizzard, drink).

If a consonant is followed by a vowel, except for e, e, u, i, and, then it does not allow softening. For example, in the words peony, earth, after the consonant there is a vowel, which provokes the softening process. In such words as a lamp, water, there are no letters e, e, u, i, and therefore, when pronouncing, all sounds are solid.

There are also letters that, during their speech reproduction, will always be soft or hard. These include: w, h, d, c, w, w. Each student needs to know the classification of letters and sounds for successful learning.

A special table will help you remember paired voiced and deaf. It is easy to navigate through it.

Such a table or similar can sometimes be found in the office primary school. It has been proven that junior schoolchildren more visual-figurative thinking is developed, therefore they need to provide new information in the form of illustrations or pictures, then it will be effective.

Each parent can create such a table on the desktop of a first grader. Do not be afraid that this hint will lead to student laziness. On the contrary, if he often looks at the image, he will quickly remember everything he needs.

There are more consonant sounds in Russian, so remembering their classification is more difficult. If you list all the deaf and voiced, then you get the number 12. The letters h, w, d, u, c, g, r, n, l, m are not taken into account, they are unpaired.

There are tips for children on how to quickly learn to recognize voiced and voiceless consonants when parsing a word. To do this, you need to press your palm to your throat and utter a distinctly separate sound. Voiceless and voiced consonants will be pronounced differently and, accordingly, differently reflected in the palm of your hand. If it vibrates in the hand, it is voiced; if not, it is deaf. Many guys use this hint when studying phonetics.

There is another exercise that helps to accurately determine which consonant is in front of the student. To do this, you need to close your ears with your hands, but at the same time, silence should be desirable. Pronounce the exciting letter, listen to it with your ears closed. If it is not heard, then it is a deaf sound, if, on the contrary, it is distinct, it is sonorous.

If you try, today any parent can find many interesting, exciting and educational exercises and rules that will help the baby easily learn new knowledge. This will make the learning process more interesting and entertaining, which in turn will affect academic performance.

Human speech is made up of a set of consecutive sounds. They are divided into two main groups - consonants and vowels - according to the principle of articulation. Consonant sounds are such sounds, during the pronunciation of which the air stream exhaled by the lungs meets possible obstacles in the mouth in its path - it can be the tongue, teeth, palate, and lips. This explains the origin of consonants. Some consonants, when formed, engage, while others do not. So, in Russian, deaf and voiced consonants are distinguished. If the consonant is formed only with the help of noise, then it will be deaf. And if they participate in his education in

varying degrees of both noise and voice, then this consonant is called voiced. We can easily notice the difference in the pair of "voiced and voiced consonants" if we put our hand to the larynx. If we call voiced consonants, we feel a tremor, a vibration of the vocal cords. Since the ligaments are tense, the air exhaled by the lungs makes them vibrate, sets them in motion. And if you pronounce a deaf sound, then the ligaments will be in a calm, relaxed state, which is why a kind of peculiar noise is formed. In addition, if voiced consonants are pronounced, our speech organs experience somewhat less stress than when pronouncing unvoiced sounds.

Some consonants - voiced and deaf - form so-called pairs. Such sounds are called paired voiced and deaf consonants. In order to make it as easy as possible to memorize deaf consonants, a special formula phrase is used ( mnemonic rule): "Stepka, do you want a cabbage? Fii!" This sentence contains all voiceless consonants.

And some of the sounds do not have a pair according to the principle of deaf and voiced consonants. These include:

[l], [m], [n], [r], [th] [l "], [m"], [n"], [r"] - voiced

[c], [x], [w: "] [h], [x"] - deaf

In addition, the following sounds [u], [h], [w], [g] are called hissing, and [p], [m], [n], [l] are called sonorants. They are close to and can form syllables.

The first row consists of consonants called sonorants, which is translated from Greek as "sonorous". That is, when they are formed, the voice prevails over the noise. And in the second row of consonants, on the contrary, the dominance of noise is noted.

One of the principles of modern Russian orthoepy (a section of phonetics that studies the norms of literary pronunciation) is that voiced consonants take the form of deaf ones, and deaf ones are likened as voiced with Voiced consonants (with the exception of sonorants) are pronounced as deaf at the end of a word or immediately before another dull sound: code - ko[t]. And deaf consonants acquire a sign of sonority if they are in front of a voiced consonant and begin to be pronounced loudly: threshing [young'ba], hand over - [h] give. Only before the consonant [v], as well as before the sonorants, the deaf do not become voiced.

Voiceless and voiced consonants create certain difficulties for us when writing. In accordance with morphological principle in the orthography of our language, neither stunning nor voicing can be expressed in writing. So, in order to check paired voiced or deaf consonants that are in the middle of a word or at the end before another consonant, it is necessary to select such or change the word in such a way that after the consonant there is a vowel: lo [sh] ka - spoon, gra [ t] - hail, horse [t] ka - horses.

All consonants in the Russian language are divided according to several criteria, including the principle of voiced-deafness. This pronunciation characteristic affects whether the voice is used when pronouncing the sound or not. The study of this topic is very important for understanding the basic principles of the phonetic system, because voiceless consonants are a very important part of it.

What is a voiceless consonant

Deaf consonants are produced only by noise, without the participation of the voice. When they are pronounced, the vocal cords are completely relaxed, the larynx does not vibrate.

Paired and unpaired voiceless consonants

Most of the sounds that fall into this category have a voiced pair. What these sounds can be found in the table “Deaf consonant sounds in Russian”.

Thus, in Russian there are 11 deaf consonants that have a voiced pair. But there are also unpaired ones - these are sounds such as [x], [x '], [h '] and [u '].

They cannot become voiced, regardless of position.

To remember all the deaf consonants that are in the Russian language, a special mnemonic phrase helps: “Stepka, do you want a cabbage? - Ugh!". But it will not help to remember their pairing in terms of hardness-softness, since deaf consonants that have a pair are presented in it in only one variety - either hard or soft.

Consonant Stunning Rule

In Russian, there are cases when a voiced consonant is written in writing, and in speech it turns into a deaf consonant. This happens, for example, when voiced letter appears at the very end of the word, as in the word mushroom, the transcription of which will look like [flu].

Due to the fact that voiced consonants are stunned at the end, it is often difficult to reproduce such words in writing. However, there is an easy way to check which letter to use: you need to change the word so that the consonant is before the vowel, for example, mushroom - mushroom. Then it will immediately become clear what needs to be written. The same applies to cases where there is a deaf consonant at the end, and in writing it is voiced “according to general rule". You can check which letter is written in the same way: cry - cry, lot - lot.

Voiced consonants located in positions at the beginning and in the middle of a word can also be stunned if they are followed by a deaf consonant. This is easy to understand with an example: booth [butka].

What have we learned?

Deaf consonant sounds are such sounds, during the formation of which the larynx does not vibrate, that is, the voice does not participate. They consist only of noise. Most deaf consonants have a voiced pair, but there are four unpaired sounds of this type - these are [x], [x '], [h '] and [u ']. Due to the rule of stunning consonants during pronunciation, those consonants that are voiced in writing go into their deaf pair. This happens if they are at the end of a word, and also when they are preceded by another deaf consonant.

Russian has 21 consonants and 36 consonants. Consonants and their corresponding consonant sounds:
b - [b], c - [c], d - [g], d - [e], f - [g], d - [d], h - [h], k - [k], l - [l], m - [m], n - [n], n - [n], r - [p], s - [s], t - [t], f - [f], x - [x ], c - [c], h - [h], w - [w], u - [u].

Consonants are divided into voiced and deaf, hard and soft. They are paired and unpaired. There are 36 different combinations of consonants in terms of pairing-unpairing of hard and soft, deaf and voiced: deaf - 16 (8 soft and 8 hard), voiced - 20 (10 soft and 10 hard).

Scheme 1. Consonant letters and consonant sounds of the Russian language.

Hard and soft consonants

Consonants are hard and soft. They are divided into paired and unpaired. Paired hard and paired soft consonants help us distinguish between words. Compare: horse [kon '] - con [kon], bow [bow] - hatch [l'uk].

For understanding, let's explain "on the fingers". If the consonant is in different words means either soft or solid sound, then the sound is paired. For example, in the word cat, the letter k denotes a solid sound [k], in the word whale, the letter k denotes soft sound[to']. We get: [k] - [k '] form a pair of hardness-softness. Sounds for different consonants cannot be attributed to a pair, for example [v] and [k '] do not make a pair in hardness-softness, but make a pair [v] - [v ']. If a consonant is always hard or always soft, then it belongs to unpaired consonants. For example, the sound [g] is always solid. There are no words in Russian where it would be soft [zh']. Since there is no pair [w] - [w ’], then it belongs to unpaired ones.

Voiced and voiceless consonants

Consonants are voiced and voiceless. Thanks to voiced and deaf consonants, we distinguish words. Compare: ball - heat, count - goal, house - volume. Deaf consonants are pronounced with the mouth almost covered; when they are pronounced, the vocal cords do not work. For voiced consonants, more air is needed, the vocal cords work.

Some consonant sounds have a similar sound in terms of pronunciation, but are pronounced with different tonality - deaf or sonorous. Such sounds are combined in pairs and form a group of paired consonants. Accordingly, paired consonants are a pair of voiceless and voiced consonants.

paired consonants: b-p, v-f, g-k, d-t, s-s, f-sh.
unpaired consonants: l, m, n, p, d, c, x, h, u.

Sonorant, noisy and hissing consonants

Sonorant - voiced unpaired consonants. There are 9 sonorous sounds: [th '], [l], [l '], [m], [m '], [n], [n '], [p], [p '].
Noisy consonants are voiced and deaf:

Noisy voiceless consonants (16): [k], [k "], [p], [p"], [s], [s"], [t], [t"], [f], [f "], [x], [x'], [q], [h'], [w], [w'];
Noisy voiced consonants (11): [b], [b '], [c], [c '], [g], [g '], [d], [d '], [g], [s ], [h'].

Hissing consonants (4): [g], [h '], [w], [u '].

Paired and unpaired consonants

Consonants (soft and hard, deaf and voiced) are divided into paired and unpaired. The tables above show the division. Let's summarize everything with a diagram: