English Consonants: Nasals, Laterals, and Approximants

Nasals

/m/ Voiced Bilabial Nasal

Represented by ‘m’ (e.g., mum). It can become syllabic when acquiring the quality of a preceding vowel (e.g., prism, socialism). It may be substituted by its labiodental allophone when in contact with a labiodental fricative (e.g., triumph, comfort).

/n/ Voiced Alveolar Nasal

Represented by ‘n’ (name, pen), ‘nn’ (annoyed), ‘kn’ (know), ‘gn’ (foreign), ‘pn’ (pneumatic), and ‘mn’ (mnemonic). It may become syllabic in words like cotton, passion, patient, and in phrases like bread and butter or rock and roll. It may be substituted by a dental allophone when in contact with a dental fricative (e.g., enthusiasm, in there).

/ŋ/ Voiced Velar Nasal

Represented by ‘n’ in contact with velar plosives /k, g/, such as ‘g’ (congress, singe), ‘k’ (ink), ‘qu’ (conquer), and ‘c’ (increase). It may be syllabic in bacon and taken during rapid speech, and it exhibits front articulation in sing versus back articulation in song.

Laterals

/l/ Voiced Alveolar Lateral

Represented by ‘l’ (look, place, milk) and ‘ll’ (allow, roll). It can become syllabic in words like middle, level, and settle.

Approximants

/r/ Voiced Post-Alveolar Approximant

In Standard British English, it is represented by ‘r’ or ‘rr’ only before a vowel (e.g., rest, arrive, carry) and never after a vowel. In Standard American English, ‘r’ is pronounced in all positions, including final ones, often involving retroflection where the tongue is bunched backwards.

/j/ Voiced Palatal Approximant

Represented by ‘y’ (yes, yawn), ‘i’ (behaviour, companion), and ‘e’ (hideous). It forms part of the sequence /ju:/ in ‘u’ (university), ‘ue’ (Tuesday), ‘ui’ (nuisance), ‘ew’ (dew), and ‘eu’ (Europe). It is absent after /tʃ/ (chew), /dʒ/ (juice), /r/ (rude, fruit, grew, true), and consonant + /l/ (blue, flew). In Standard American English, the sequence /ju:/ is often pronounced as /u:/ in these cases, except for university.

/w/ Voiced Bilabial Velar Approximant

Represented by ‘w’ (waste, twelve, Gwen), ‘wh’ (why), ‘qu’ (quite, queen), and ‘gu’ (language, anguish). It is also present in choir, one, suite, and suede. It is silent in who, wrist, sword, answer, Harwich, and Berwick.