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A consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a constriction or closure at one or more points along the vocal tract. The word consonant comes from Latin meaning "sounding with" or "sounding together", the idea being that consonants don't sound on their own, but only occur with a nearby vowel; this conception of consonants, however, does not reflect a modern linguistic understanding, which defines them in terms of vocal tract constrictions.

There are a group of consonants called sonorants that sometimes act as vowels, occupying the peak of a syllable, and sometimes act as consonants. For example, in English, the sound [m] in "mud" is a consonant, but in "prism", it occupies an entire syllable, as a vowel would.Ads by Google

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14y ago

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