English Phonetics: Plosives and Fricatives Explained

Posted on Apr 2, 2025 in Security and Emergencies

Plosives and Fricatives in English Phonetics

Plosives

  • /p/ voiceless bilabial plosive: Normally represented by the letter ‘p’, with some exceptions (e.g., shepherd). It is silent in pneumonia, psalm, raspberry, cupboard.
  • /b/ voiced bilabial plosive: Represented by the letter ‘b’. Silent in climb, tomb, dumb, doubt, subtle.
  • /t/ voiceless alveolar plosive: Normally represented by the letter ‘t’, but not always (e.g., Thames or ‘-ed’ after voiceless consonants except ‘t’ as in talked, stopped, coughed, opposed to crashed). It can be silent in listen, castle, mustn’t, next day, postman, most people. It may get lateralised (little), nasalised (eaten), dentalised (eighth), and have a post-alveolar articulation (try).
  • /d/ voiced alveolar plosive: Represented by the letter ‘d’ and by ‘-ed’ after voiced consonants except ‘d’ (robbed, plugged, lived, nused, bridged, appealed, slammed, banned). Silent in blind man. It may get lateralised (middle), nasalised (hidden), dentalised (width), and have a post-alveolar articulation (dry).
  • /k/ voiceless velar plosive: Represented by ‘k’ (king), ‘c’ (coat, electric), ‘ch’ (character, ache), ‘qu’ (queen, liquor), ‘x’ (six) and /ks/ when not initial in the accented syllable (extra). Silent in knee, muscle. Advanced articulation in “cute” because of the contact with /j/, lip-rounding articulation in “quick” because of the contact with /w/, spread-lips articulation in “keep” because of the contact with /i/.
  • /g/ voiced velar plosive: Represented by ‘g’ (gum, again, big), ‘gg’ (beggar), ‘gh’ (ghost), ‘gu’ (guard), and ‘x’ when initial in the accented syllable (exact, exam). Silent in sign, reign, sing, banging. Advanced and spread-lips articulation in “geese”, and lip-rounding articulation in goose.

Fricatives

  • /f/ voiceless labiodental fricative: Represented by ‘f’ (flower), ‘ff’ (office), ‘ph’ (phone), ‘gh’ (laugh).
  • /v/ voiced labiodental fricative: ‘v’ (value), depending on the speaker ‘ph’ (Stephen), and ‘f’ in of.
  • /θ/ voiceless dental fricative: Represented by ‘th’ in content/lexical words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) as in theory, author, cloth.
  • /ð/ voiced dental fricative: Also represented by ‘th’ but, in this case, in structural/functional words (articles, demonstratives, conjunctions, etc.), as in “the, this, then”. It can be represented by ‘th’ in the final position of some content/lexical words (smooth, with – but not in standard American English where they are pronounced with /θ/), when followed by mute –e (bathe, breathe), and in plurals provided ‘th’ follows a long vowel or diphthong (baths, mouths).
  • /s/ voiceless alveolar fricative: ‘s’ (sink), ‘-s’ preceded by a voiceless sound (takes, stops, completes, laughs), ‘sc’ (science), ‘c’ (cigar), ‘-se’ in nouns and adjectives (course, dense), ‘ss’ (assist). Silent in island, isles, aisle.
  • /z/ voiced alveolar fricative: ‘z’ (zoo, realize), ‘zz’ (jazz, dizzy), ‘-s’ when preceded by a voiced sound (friends, pens, lives, bags, plays), ‘-se’ in verbs (use, cleanse), ‘ss’ (dissolve, scissors).
  • /ʃ/ voiceless palatoalveolar fricative: ‘sh’ (shoe, dash), ‘si’ preceded by a consonant (pension), ‘sci’ (conscious), ‘ci’ (suspicious, magician), ‘ti’ (nation).