TH, costumes, dogs

[justcarol67]

Dave wrote:
> 
> See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language#Consonants
> 
> For definitions of the terms (bilabial etc) click on them.
> 
> As Karen ('the other Karen') has implied, the words 'voiced' 
> and 'unvoiced' means exactly that: a voiced consonant is one in 
> which you have used your vocal chords to make a noise.  I think it's 
> quite easy if you pay attention to what your tongue, teeth, lips and 
> throat are actually doing as you speak.
><snip>
> Roughly speaking, we make consonants with three parts of the mouth: 
> lips (labials), teeth/tongue (dental), and the palate at the back of 
> the mouth (velar) - in some languages finer distinctions are 
> necessary, hence all the blanks in the table.
> 
> Plosives are those sounds which can only last an instant.  If 
> labial, they are p (unvoiced) and b (voiced); dental, t and d 
> (ditto); velar, k and g (as in dog).
> 
> Nasals are those where you breathe out through the nose (see, this 
> terminology is not so abstruse, it's common *sense*) as you make the 
> noise: m, n, ng.  They are necessarily voiced.
> 
> Fricatives are where you blow air through the mouth as you make the 
> same or similar motion as you would for the corresponding plosive.  
<snip>
> 
> That leaves the two forms of l (limit, ill), and r and y (yet).
> 
> There you are.  Something we would not even bother to spend time 
> discussing if our schools took a couple of hours of English lessons 
> to teach it at age 12.  It's so easy that by the time you were 3 you 
> didn't even know you were doing it.
> 
> David, who thinks another few hours on the phonetic alphabet would 
> transform the performance of anglo-saxons at foreign languages


Great definitions ( took phonetics, too, but I had trouble
distinguishing vowels, not consonants. To me , th "o" in "hot" and the
"a" in "father" sound exactly the same--but the shape of my mouth when
I'm saying them is completely different. 

BTW, I think you left out sibilant (s and z?), which I'll let you
define. (Aren't sh and zh sibilants, too? Bad me: I didn't look at the
table.)

For the person having trouble distinguishing between voiced and
unvoiced "th" (thorn and eth in Anglo Saxon, if anyone cares), try
breathe and breath.

Carol, who hated the International Phonetic Alphabet and promptly
forgot it as soon as she'd passed the course