English consonants

APPROXIMANTS

• The other way to produce a sonorant is to leave an opening in the oral cavity that is wide enough so that there is none of the noise that characterizes fricatives. These consonsants are called approximants because the approach of the articulators is only approximate. One way to achieve this is to make a complete contact as for a stop consonant but release the air at one or both sides of the tongue. Such a sound is called a lateral approximant. English has one lateral approximant phoneme, with the contact at the alveolar place of articulation. This is the sound at the beginning and end of the word lull; it is symbolized with /l/, so the pronunciation of the word lull is written /lʌl/.