Consonant sounds are sounds whose pronunciation creates obstacles in the path of air flow. There are 36 consonant sounds in the Russian language. Consonants are letters that represent consonant sounds in writing. There are 21 of them in the Russian language. All consonant letters of the Russian alphabet: B, V, G, D, ZH, Z, J, K, L, M, N, P, R, S, T, F, X, C, Ch, Sh, Shch.

Consonant sounds can be hard or soft, voiceless or voiced. Consonants can be unvoiced or voiced, and do not have a hard/soft character.

Most consonant sounds are paired on the basis of hardness/softness. The same letter can represent the corresponding hard or soft sound in in different words. For example, the letter B denotes a soft sound in the word bandage and a hard sound in the word bull. The softness of a consonant during transcription is indicated by a comma (apostrophe) on the right above the consonant sound icon: bʼ.

Consonant sounds in Russian become soft if they are followed by vowels of the second row (E, Yo, Yu, Ya, I) and b. Compare: sleep [spʼat] and sleep [spatʼ].

Paired consonant sounds based on hardness/softness

Sometimes students forget whether Y, Shchi Ch are soft or hard consonants. Determining the softness/hardness of unpaired consonants often causes difficulties, since there is nothing to compare them with.

The classification of paired and unpaired consonants, soft and hard consonants, voiced and voiceless consonants is presented in the table below:

Y, Shch and Ch are always soft consonant letters.

Shch and Ch are always pronounced softly, no matter what letter comes after. These are soft unpaired hissing consonant sounds. They cause spelling errors in the spelling of words with the combinations CHU, SHU, CHA, SHCHA (miracle [chʼu], pike [schʼu], thicket [chʼashchʼa]).

Y is a special letter. It represents a consonant voiced soft sound, indicated in transcription by the symbol [j] (iot).

[ZH] and [SH] are unpaired hard hissing consonant sounds. Ts is also an unpaired hard sound. Because of their hardness, schoolchildren make a common mistake in the combinations ZHI, SHI (wide [shi], life [zhy]), TSY-CI (chicken - circus).

Voiceless and voiced consonants

Consonant sounds consist of noise (voiceless) or noise and voice (voiced). Similar-sounding consonants form pairs.

Voiced consonant sounds, in which the proportion of noise is minimal, are called sonorant (from the Latin sonorus, which means “sonorous”). These are [m] - [mʼ], [n] - [nʼ], [l] - [lʼ], [р] - [рʼ] and. They do not have a voiceless/voiced pair.

Consonant letters and sounds can be voiceless or voiced. Does this mean that behind a voiced consonant there is always a voiced sound, and behind a voiceless letter there is always a voiceless sound? Not at all. For example: cat [cat] and code [cat].

Paired and unpaired consonants behave differently in a word. For sounds that are paired in deafness/voice, the strong position (that is, the one in which the sound is clearly, distinctly manifested) is the position before the vowel or sonorant sound. Before a consonant and at the end of a word, a consonant sound can change its sound.

Voiceless consonants can represent voiced consonants if they appear before a voiced consonant. For example: station - vo[gz]al, knock down - [zbʼ]it, mowing - ko[zʼb]a. This process is called voicing.

Voiced consonants represent a voiceless consonant at the end of a word or before a voiceless consonant. For example: tooth - zu[p], jump - burp, eye - eye[s]. This process is called stunning.

Children often have a question: is ts a voiced or voiceless consonant? Let us explain the nature of this sound. [ts] is an affricate, that is, it comes from the merger of two sounds: [t] and [s]. Both components are voiceless, and the resulting [ts] is also voiceless.

Table of voiceless and voiced consonants in pairs:

Consonant sounds that are unpaired in deafness:

Mnemonics will help you remember blind letters. In the phrase “Styopka, do you want some cheek? Fi!” contains all voiceless consonants and not a single voiced one.

When spoken voiced consonants the air flow creates vibrations of the vocal cords. If the vocal cords are not used, then the sound is considered deaf.

But in Russian, a voiced letter does not always denote a voiced sound (and vice versa: a voiceless consonant does not always denote a voiceless sound). It depends on the position of the letter in the word.

Voiced consonant often stunned at the end of a word. For example, in the word “colander” we read “k” at the end, because the sound is in a weak position. Can also be stunned before a voiceless consonant. For example, we pronounce the word “gait” as “plowing”.

To determine which letter will be written correctly, the letter must be placed in a strong position in a word with the same root (that is, before the vowel or consonants M, L, N, R).

For example: “boat” - “boat”, “mushroom” - “mushroom”.

Table

Also paired in deafness/voicing are pairs of soft consonants from those indicated in the table. For example: “b’ - p’”, “v’ - f’”.

Hard and soft

In words, the same letter can represent both hard and soft sounds. This is due to the influence of subsequent consonants on softness/hardness. Hard consonants sound before A, O, U, Y, E, soft consonants sound before I, E, Yo, Yu, I.

Table

What sounds are called consonants?
What does a consonant sound consist of?
What are the different consonant sounds?
How many consonant letters and consonant sounds are there in the Russian alphabet?
Which consonants are always hard and which are always soft?
What letters indicate the softness of a consonant?

Sounds in the pronunciation of which the air encounters an obstacle in the mouth are called consonant sounds. A consonant sound consists of noise and voice or only noise.

Consonant sounds are divided into voiced and unvoiced. Voiced ones consist of noise and voice, while deaf ones consist only of noise.

The sounds only consist of noise: [k], [p], [s], [t], [f], [x], [ts], [ch], [sh], [sch]. These are voiceless consonants.

Many consonant sounds form pairs by voicing -deafness: [b] — [p], [v] — [f], [g] — [k], [d] — [t], [z] — [s], [w] — [w].

To memorize voiced consonants, you can learn the phrase: “ THE LION AND THE TOAD HAVE MANY FRIENDS».
See all phrases for memorizing voiced and voiceless consonants.

Voiceless consonants are easy to remember from the phrase: “ STYOPKA, DO YOU WANT A CHECK?— Ugh!».

Consonant sounds are indicated by letters:

B,IN,G,D,AND,Z,Y,TO,L,M,N,P,R,WITH,T,F,X,C,H,Sh,SCH.

In total, the Russian language has 21 consonants.

Consonant sounds are also hard and soft.

Hard and soft sounds differ in the position of the tongue when pronounced. When pronouncing soft consonants, the middle back of the tongue is raised towards the hard palate.

Most consonant sounds form pairs based on hardness and softness:

The following hard and soft consonant sounds do not form hard-softness pairs:

Table “Consonant sounds: paired and unpaired, voiced and voiceless, hard and soft” (grades 1-4)

Note: V primary school hard consonant sounds are indicated in blue, soft consonant sounds - green, vowel sounds - in red.

Hardness consonant sounds are indicated in writing by vowels A , ABOUT , U , Y , E .

Softness consonant sound is indicated in writing by vowels E, Yo, I, Yu, I, as well as the letter b (soft sign).

Compare: nose[nose] - carried[n❜os], corner[corner] - coal[ugal❜].

Unpaired ringing sounds[th❜], [l], [l❜], [m], [m❜] [n], [n❜] [r], [r❜] are called sonorous, which means “sonorous” in Latin.

The sounds [zh], [sh], [ch❜], [sch❜] are called sizzling. They got this name because their pronunciation is similar to hissing.

The sounds [zh], [sh] are unpaired hard hissing sounds.
The sounds [ch❜] and [ш❜] are unpaired soft hissing sounds.

The sounds [c], [s❜], [z], [z❜], [ts] are called whistling.

Consonant can not be stressed or unstressed.

In the Russian language there are more consonant sounds (36) than consonant letters (21), since one letter can denote paired hard and soft sounds: for example, the letter L (el) denotes the sounds [l] and [l❜].

Attention! A consonant sound can form a syllable only with

As you know, speech sounds can be divided into vowels (pronounced only by voice) and consonants (noise is involved in their pronunciation). Many consonants can be paired according to their characteristics, but not all.

Paired and unpaired consonants according to deafness-voicing

It should be noted right away that there are only four such sounds that are unpaired in all respects. We'll talk about them at the end of the article. The majority fits into a couple based on one characteristic, but not on another. Therefore, it makes no sense to write about the consonant “unpaired” - you need to indicate on what basis.

Consonants differ in deafness and voicedness. This means that when pronouncing some of them, more voice is used (sonorant, voiced), while others use more noise (voiceless) or even just one noise (hissing).

Sonorants are very sonorous consonants, they have a lot of voice, but little noise.

Two sonorant consonants - [L] and [R] - can even, under some circumstances, form a syllable, that is, behave like vowels. Surely you have come across the erroneous spelling “theator”. It is explained precisely by the fact that [P] in this word is syllabic. Other examples are the words “Alexander”, “meaning”.

Unpaired voiced consonant sounds are just sonorant sounds. There are five of them:

Sometimes [Y] is not classified as sonorant, but it still remains voiced unpaired. Let's look at the table.

It shows that, in addition to unpaired voiced sounds, there are also unpaired unpaired sounds. Most of them are fizzy; Only the dull unpaired consonant sound [Ts] does not belong to hissing sounds.

In this article we consider only Russian speech sounds. In other languages, the pairing may be different. For example, in the Tibetan language there is a voiceless pair to a voiced [L].

Hardness-softness pairs

In addition to deafness and voicedness, Russian consonants form pairs based on hardness and softness.

This means that some of them are perceived by ear as softer. Then we usually indicate this in writing somehow: for example, we write a soft sign or one of the vowels E, Yo, Yu, Ya.

Oral speech is primary (everyone understands that it appeared before written speech), so it is incorrect to say: “The sound [N’] in the word HORSE is soft, because it is followed by b.” On the contrary, we write b because H' is soft.

According to hardness-softness, consonants also form pairs. But even in this case, not everything. In the Russian language there are unpaired soft and unpaired hard consonants.

Unpaired hard consonant sounds are mainly hissing sounds ([Zh], [Sh]) and [C]. They always form at the far palate.

But in the ancestor of our language, Old Church Slavonic, on the contrary, [ZH] and [SH] were always soft and did not have a hard pair. Then [K], [G] and [X] were not soft. Nowadays you can find (once the only possible) pronunciation with a soft [Zh’] [DROZH’ZH’I] or [DOZH’] (rain), but this is no longer necessary.

Unpaired soft ones are [Y’] and again hissing [H’] and [Ш’].

That is, all hissing ones are either always hard or always soft. The letter b after them does not indicate softness, it performs a grammatical function (for example, even without knowing what “baldness” is, anyone will immediately say that this is the word female, because in the masculine gender b is not placed after hissing words). Hard unpaired hissing consonant sounds in a word may have b with them, but this does not mean that they should soften. This means that we have a 3rd declension noun, an adverb or a verb.

Unpaired soft consonant sounds in a word make you want to put b after them, which is often not required. Therefore, it makes sense to remember that in combinations CHK, CHN, etc. b after h is not needed.

The sounds are “completely unpaired”

In the Russian language, most consonants are either paired according to both characteristics, or paired according to one characteristic and unpaired according to another. For example, in the word [P'EN'] (stump) the sound [P'] is paired both in deafness-voicing (P' - B'), and in hardness-softness (P' - P), and the sound [N'] is paired in terms of hardness-softness (N' - N), but unpaired in deafness-voiceness.

However, there are several sounds that are unpaired in both characteristics. These are the sounds [Y'] (unpaired voiced, unpaired soft), [Ch'] (unpaired soft, unpaired deaf), [Sh'] (unpaired soft, unpaired deaf) and [Ts] (unpaired hard, unpaired deaf). Such sounds are often made in Russian language Olympiads. For example,“Guess the sound by its characteristics: unpaired hard, unpaired dull.” We already see that this is [C].

What have we learned?

From the article about paired and unpaired consonants, we learned that in the Russian language there are both paired and unpaired consonants. Paired consonants differ in deafness-voicing and in hardness-softness.

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

Paired consonants according to voiced-voicelessness

All consonants in the Russian language form pairs; a voiced consonant is opposed to a voiceless consonant. There are 12 paired letters in total, making 6 pairs:

Paired and unpaired consonants need to be known in order to be successful in spelling. Many spellings 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 not clearly heard when pronounced and spelling it is difficult. 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 because phonetics has rules that need to be remembered. They are based on the fact that sounds can only be voiced or only unvoiced. They are easy to remember because they are small in number. As a rule, by the end of 1st grade, students know them by heart. These include r, n, l, m, th - sonorous, always voiced, ts, ch, sh, x - always voiceless.

Paired consonants for softness and hardness

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

• when after a consonant there is a vowel: yu, ya, e, e, and (blizzard, buttercup);
• or there is a soft sign (blizzard, drinking).

If after a consonant there is a vowel, except e, e, yu, ya, and, then it does not allow softening. For example, in the words peony, earth, after the consonant there is a vowel, which provokes the process of softening. In words such as lamp, water, there are no letters e, e, yu, i, and, therefore, when pronounced, all sounds are hard.

There are also letters that, when reproduced in speech, will always be soft or hard. These include: shch, h, j, c, w, g. Every student needs to know the classification of letters and sounds for successful learning.

A special table will help you remember paired voiced and voiceless voices. It's easy to navigate.

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

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

There are more consonant sounds in the Russian language, so remembering their classification is more difficult. If you list all the unvoiced and voiced ones, you get the number 12. The letters ch, sh, y, shch, c, zh, r, n, l, m are not taken into account; they are classified as unpaired.

There are tips for children on how to quickly learn to recognize a voiced and a voiceless consonant when parsing a word. To do this, you need to press your palm to your throat and pronounce a clearly separate sound. Voiceless and voiced consonants will be pronounced differently and, accordingly, will be reflected differently in the palm of your hand. If there is vibration in the hand, it is voiced; if not, it is deaf. Many children 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 cover your ears with your hands, but preferably there should be silence. Say the exciting letter and listen to it with your ears closed. If it is not heard, then it is a dull sound; if, on the contrary, it is clearly heard, it is a ringing sound.

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