Consonants

Consonants are speech sounds produced by partially or fully obstructing the airflow from the vocal tract, usually with the tongue, teeth, lips and/or palatal structures. They are used to form the building blocks of language, and are essential for expressing meaning. Consonants can be used to create and distinguish words, differentiate between grammatical forms, and provide emphasis and intonation in speech. In linguistics, consonants are typically divided into two classes: voiced and voiceless. As these sounds are fundamental to the structure of most languages, understanding their characteristics and related information is important for many fields of study, including language acquisition, teaching, and interpreting.