Consonant Consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and , pronounced by forcing air through a narrow channel (fricatives); and and , which have air flowing through the nose (nasals). Contrasting with consonants are vowels. Since the number of possible sounds in all of the world's languages is much greater than the number of letters in any one
Alaryngeal speech family members" but "reported to be largely unintelligible to outsiders". Pharyngeal speech can be produced in the early stages of learning esophageal speech. However both buccal and pharyngeal speech are less clear than trained esophageal speech and "should not be regarded as a desirable or practical primary method of alaryngeal speech". A further importance is to theories of the evolution of human speech since alaryngeal speech shows that speech is not dependent entirely upon evolved anatomy as it can be created using vocal tract anatomy in an adaptive manner. Alaryngeal speech Alaryngeal speech is speech made using sources other than