What is a sonorous sound?

Few people in ordinary life think about the classification of sounds that people use in speech. Some of the school course of the Russian language remembers that there are vowels and consonants, the latter still being paired and divided into voiced and deaf ones, and there are also sibilants. But this is not a complete list. Would an ordinary schoolboy answer the question, what is a sonorous sound? Hardly.

Classification of speech sounds

Those who are interested in philology and receive a profile education, in the process of learning, find out that sounds are also subdivided by the method of extraction, localization and other characteristic features. They are best known to specialists - speech therapists-defectologists, as well as linguists, specializing in phonetics.

There are several classifications according to various criteria in both the acoustic and the physiological sense. This is the main division used by phonetics. It is to the physiology of sound extraction that the separation of sounds into vowels, consonants and their further fragmentation into subcategories is concerned. The classification from the acoustics point of view is not known to everyone. That is why it will be extremely interesting to consider.

Acoustic classification

First of all, they distinguish vocal and non-vocal sounds. When speaking the first, a voice is activated, so that all the vowels and some consonants are vocal. Further, consonant and non-consonant sounds are distinguished. The first include all consonants, and the rest are vowels. Still there is a category of sharp ones, those that differ in the heterogeneity of the sound spectrum, for example, [ц] or [р], fall into it. The rest is classified as unsharp. Since the school is familiar separation into sonorous and deaf, but from the acoustical point of view, vowels and consonants, which are not paired, also belong to sonorous ones. There are several more criteria, but they mostly depend on the voice apparatus of a particular person and the intonations used by him.

One of the first in speech and, perhaps, the most simple in education are sonorous sounds. They are only consonants, refer to the vocal. When uttering such sounds, there are practically no obstacles to the exhaled air. What are they so interesting about?

Sonorous

The name of this category comes from Latin, where sonorus means "sonorous". And they really can not be called deaf. According to theory, sonorous sound when it is pronounced does not create turbulent airflow in the speech tract, that is, in the larynx, pharynx, oral cavity and nose. In fact, the voice simply prevails over the noise, that is, the movement of the lips, tongue, cheeks are minimal. In Russian, such sounds include [m], [n], [l], [p] and [j]. All of them, except the last, form a soft pair - [m '], [н'], [л '] and [р'].

Features of sonorous sounds are such that, despite belonging to consonants, they are very close in structure to vowels. In addition, by ear, they sound more pleasant, more melodious. This feature is used by poets and writers in such a reception as sound recording. Sonants, as they are also called, become the first consonant sounds pronounced by children. And this is due precisely to the ease in their articulation and education. By the way, it is the sonoras that are most often the "core" of the syllable, its most sonorous and notable part.

Sonants in other languages

Naturally, not only in Russian speech sonorous sounds are used. Examples can be found in many other languages, especially many in Italian and Spanish, which makes them sound smooth and beautiful. In English there are two sonants, analogues of which are not in Russian. We are talking about [ŋ] and [w]. Sonorous sound [ŋ] refers to sonorous nasal and pronounced quite differently than usual [n], and [w] very much resembles a vowel and is pronounced with lips so that something like a short [ye] is obtained. In German, there is little sonant, there are prevailing pinching, whistling sounds and affricates, so it seems to many that he is so rude by ear. In non-European languages, there is also such a category as "sonorous sound", and the variety of incoming phonemes is striking.