Consonants
Humans
produce sounds by pushing air from the lungs through the oral
cavity. If there is an obstruction, complete or partial, in the
mouth, the sound is called a consonant. We classify the
consonants by 1) where the obstuction occurs, 2) the degree of closure
produced by the obstruction, 3) whether the nasal passages are open or
closed, 4) the constrast between voicing and nonvoicing, and 5) other
factors. What follows is a detailed description of the consonant
system of Esperanto.
Stops
Consider the /b/ in 'buŝo' = mouth, which
is identical to the /b/ in English 'boat'. To produce this
sound, we momentarily stop the flow of air through the oral cavity
by pressing together the upper and lower lips, and then we
release the blockage. The resulting turbulence is what the human
ear interprets as /b/. Because the blockage in the oral cavity is
complete, we call this sound a stop. Because the blockage is
formed by the two lips, it is called bilabial, and because the vocal
chords vibrate during its production, it is said to be voiced.
/b/ is thus a voiced bilabial stop. The /p/ of 'poŝo' =
pocket is produced in the same way except that the vocal chords do not
vibrate. /p/ is an unvoiced bilabial stop. Generally
consonants exist in pairs; one member of the pair is voiced and
other is unvoiced. (The vocal chords are in the larynx (Adam's
apple), and you can feel the vibration by placing your finger on your
larynx.)
The /t/ of
'tuŝi' = touch is an unvoiced apico-dental stop in the sense that the
apex (tip) of the tongue forms an obstruction against the back surface
of the upper teeth. The /d/ of 'dento' = tooth is the voiced
member of the pair. It is a voiced apico-dental stop.
Note that /t/ and /d/ in English are slightly different in that the tip
of the tongue touches not the back surface of the upper teeth, but
rather the alveolar ridge, the slight protuberance behind the upper
teeth. In English they are apico-alveolar. In Spanish they
are apico-dental. The difference is not great, and there is no
authoritative rule in Esperanto that says that they are apico-dental
rather than apico-alveolar. I have a preference for apico-dental,
but either way is acceptable pronunciation.
The /k/ of
'kisi' = to kiss is an unvoiced dorso-velar stop in the sense that the
dorsum or back part of the tongue closes the oral cavity by touching
the velum, which is the back part of the palate, which in turn is the
whole upper part (roof) of the mouth. The /g/ of 'legi' = to read
is a voiced dorso-velar stop.
We how have 6
stops. We often shorten the terminology and say that /b/ and /p/
are labial, that /t/ and /d/ are dental, and that /k/ and /g/ are
velar. Another term for stop is plosive. The obstruction is
released suddenly and the term 'plosive' suggest an explosion of air
released under pressure.
labial
dental velar
voiced
b
d g
unvoiced
p
t k
Fricatives
If we do not completely block the passage of air through the oral
cavity by a complete closure and allow a small aperture to remain
through which air continues to flow, we produce another class of
consonants called fricatives. For example, to produce the /z/ of
/uzi/ = to use, the tip of the tongue
almost touches (but not quite) the alveolar ridge. This sound
lasts as long as you can continue to push air out of your lungs, and
you can very easily feel the vibration of the vocal chords with your
finger. /z/ is a voiced apico-alveolar fricative. The /s/
of 'sep' = seven is the unvoiced member of the pair.
It is possible to produce bilabial fricatives, but in the languages of
the world, labio-dental fricatives are much more common. To
produce the /f/ of 'forta' = strong, the lower lip almost touches the
upper teeth, creating a partial obstruction. /f/ is
unvoiced. The /v/ of 'voĉa' = voiced in the voiced member of the
pair. The /v/ of English is labio-dental, whereas the
corresponding sound in Spanish is bilabial.
If you press the tongue against a certain part of the upper surface of
the mouth in order to produce a stop and then lower it slightly, the
tongue occupies precisely the proper position in order to produce the
corresponding fricative. Thus if you place your tongue against
the velum to produce /k/ and then lower it slightly, you will produce
the unvoiced velar fricative /ĥ/ of 'eĥo' = echo. It is
possible to produce the voiced counterpart, but this sound does not
exist in Esperanto. The unvoiced velar fricative does not exist
in American English. It is the 'ch' in Scottish 'loch' or in
modern German 'hoch'. It has never been a common sound in
Esperanto, and in fact many words which originally had this sound,
e.g., 'ĥemio' = chemistry, how have variants with 'k' which have for
all practical purposes supplanted the original form. Today
people generally use 'kemio'. If you have difficulty with this
sound, the consequences aren't too great.
If we remember that the stops are bilabial and the fricatives are
labio-dental, and if we somewhat loosely use the term 'dental' for
apico-dental or apico-alveolar, we can arrange the
consonants as follows.
labial
dental velar
voiced stop
b
d g
unvoiced stop
p
t k
voiced fricative
v z
unvoiced
fricative
f
s ĥ
The /ŝ/ of 'ŝipo/ is a prepalatal fricative in the sense that the
front part of the tongue touches the front part of the palate
immediately behind the alveolar ridge. It is unvoiced and identical to English 'sh' in 'ship'. The
'ĵ' in 'aĵo' = thing is the voiced counterpart and is identical to English 'z' in 'azure' or 's' in 'measure'.
Nasals
In order to pronounce a nasal consonant, you close the mouth as for
a stop and allow air to flow through the nasal passages. The
mouth functions as a resonance chamber, and the shape of it determines
the resulting sound. The /m/ of 'fama' = famous is bilabial, and
the /n/ of 'nazo' = nose is dental. Many languages have a velar
nasal phoneme. For example, in English, 'sin' and 'sing' are a
minimal pair and are distinguished only by the difference between
dental /n/ and velar /ng/ (The proper symbol for this phoneme, using
the International Phonetic Alphabet, is /ŋ/). Esperanto does not
have the phoneme /ng/, but in many languages a nasal consonant before
another consonant is produced in the position of the second consonant
(this phenomenon is called assimilation), and when in Esperanto a nasal
consonant spelled with 'n' occurs before /k/ or /g/, it is generally
pronounced like the [ng] in English 'sing'.
/l/ and /r/ and /h/
The /l/ in 'lango' = tongue is a lateral consonant in the sense that
the tongue blocks the oral cavity in the middle but allows air to flow
out on one or both sides. To produce the /r/ in 'rido' = laugh,
the tip of the tongue touches the front part of the palate and
immediately falls. Such a sound is often called a flap. It
is identical to the Spanish /r/ in 'pera' = pear. The /h/ is
'hela' = bright is a glottal fricative which is the result of air
flowing through the consticted space between the vocal chords.
That space between the vocal chords is called the glottis.
Affricates
We now need to analyze the /c/ in 'certa' = certain. If the
tongue closes the oral cavity behind the teeth so as to produce /t/ and
then rapidly releases the blockage, we hear only the stop /t/, although
the tongue during a very short period of time is the position of
/s/. If the blockage is released more slowly, we hear the
/s/. /c/ is a combination of /t/ followed by /s/. Such
combinations of a stop followed by a fricative in the same position are
called affricates. /c/
is an unvoiced dental affricate, and is quite common in
Esperanto. Much less common is the combination of /d/ followed by
/z/. We could say that it is the voiced counterpart of /c/, i.e.,
a voiced dental affricate. To say that 'dz' represents a voiced
phoneme has the disadvantage that it violates the principle that each
phoneme is represented by a unique letter in the spelling system of the
langauge. To say that 'dz' is a sequence of the two phonemes /d/
+ /z/ has the disadvantage that we treat differently two very similar
sounds (the 'c' in 'eco' = property and the 'dz' in 'edzo' = husband)
for purely orthographic reasons and that there is an asymmetry in the
table of phonemes. There is no perfect solution, but this is
purely theoretical matter and has no practical consequences.
/ĉ/ and /ĝ/ are prepalatal affricates. /ĉ/ is a combination of
an unvoiced prepalatal stop and the unvoiced prepalatal fricative
/ŝ/. Some languages, for example, Hungarian, have an unvoiced
(pre)palatal stop. Hungarian also has the unvoiced (pre)palatal
affricate. Esperanto, like many other languages (English,
Spanish), has only the affricate but not the stop. If we
represent
the stop by [t'], then /ĉ/ is [t'] + /ŝ/. /ĝ/ is the voiced
counterpart of /ĉ/ and is the combination of a voiced prepalatal stop
and the voiced prepalatal fricative /ĵ/. Hungarian has in the
voiced case both the
stop and the affricate. Esperanto has only the affricate.
Conclusion
Thus Esperanto has the following 22 consonant phonemes (or 21 if we omit /dz/):
labial
dental prepalatal velar glottal
voiced stop
b
d g
unvoiced stop
p
t k
voiced fricative
v z ĵ
unvoiced
fricative
f
s ŝ
ĥ h
voiced
affricate
dz ĝ
unvoiced
affricate
c ĉ
nasal
(voiced)
m n
latteral
(voiced)
l
flap
(voiced)
r
Language is a very complex phenomenon which is far from being fully
understood. Linguists create models to explain their empirical
observations. The form of a model is a matter of judgment and may
depend on the purpose at hand. In the above diagram, there is no
general agreement as to whether 'dz' should or should not be a
phoneme. When analyzing English linguists generally prefer to
consider [ts] as a sequence of the two phonemes /t/ + /s/, whereas in
Esperanto the same sound is always regarded as a phoneme.
With only a few modifications the above diagram becomes a model for the
system of English consonants. Remove the dental affricates /c/
and /dz/ and the velar fricative /ĥ/ and add the velar nasal
/ng/. All that remains is to add two interdental
fricatives: the 'th' in 'then', which is voiced, and the 'th' in
'thin', which is unvoiced. They are called interdental because
the tip of the tongue is between the upper and lower teeth.
Updated 8/27/2004