section_path: Phonology/Consonants
section_name: Consonants
paragraph_text: Consonants
  
  Most English dialects share the same 24 (or 26 if marginal /x/ and glottal stop (/ʔ/) included) consonant phonemes. The consonant inventory shown below is valid for California English, and for RP.
  
  * The sound /ŋ/ can only occur as a coda.
  
  ** Conventionally transcribed /r/
  
  In the table, when obstruents (stops, affricates, and fricatives) appear in pairs, such as /p b/, /tʃ dʒ/, and /s z/, the first is fortis (strong) and the second is lenis (weak). Fortis obstruents, such as /p tʃ s/ are pronounced with more muscular tension and breath force than lenis consonants, such as /b dʒ z/, and are always voiceless. Lenis consonants are partly voiced at the beginning and end of utterances, and fully voiced between vowels. Fortis stops such as /p/ have additional articulatory or acoustic features in most dialects: they are aspirated when they occur alone at the beginning of a stressed syllable, often unaspirated in other cases, and often unreleased or pre-glottalised at the end of a syllable. In a single-syllable word, a vowel before a fortis stop is shortened: thus nip has a noticeably shorter vowel (phonetically, but not phonemically) than nib (see below).
  
  In RP, the lateral approximant /l/, has two main allophones (pronunciation variants): the clear or plain, as in light, and the dark or velarised, as in full. GA has dark l in most cases.
  
  All sonorants (liquids /l, r/ and nasals /m, n, ŋ/) devoice when following a voiceless obstruent, and they are syllabic when following a consonant at the end of a word.