Which letter stands for voiced? Consonant sounds of the Russian language (hard-soft, voiced-voiceless, paired-unpaired, hissing, whistling)

In the Russian language, voiceless and voiced consonants are distinguished. The rules for writing letters denoting them begin to be studied already in the first grade. But even after graduating from school, many still cannot write words containing voiceless and voiced consonants without errors. This is sad.

Why do you need to write voiceless and voiced consonants correctly in Russian?

Some people treat writing culture superficially. They justify their ignorance in this area with such a common phrase: “What difference does it make how it’s written, it’s still clear what it’s about!”

In fact, errors in spelling words indicate a low level of personal culture. You can't consider yourself developed person, not knowing how to write correctly in their native language.

There is one more fact that testifies in favor of the rule of error-free writing. After all, voiceless and voiced consonants are sometimes found in words that are homophones in oral speech. That is, they sound the same, but are written differently. Incorrect use of a letter in them is fraught with loss or change in the meaning of the context.

For example, the words “pond” - “rod”, “cat” - “code”, “horn” - “rock” are included in this list.

Shameful loss

During your Russian language lesson, you can tell schoolchildren a funny episode from your life. It should be based on the fact that several children did not know how to correctly write in words the letters denoting voiced and voiceless consonant sounds.

And this happened during the school team game “Treasure Hunters”. In its rules it was noted that it was necessary to move along the route indicated in the notes. Moreover, the place where the next letter was hidden was not indicated precisely. The note contained only a hint of him.

The teams received the first letters with the following text: “Road, meadow, stone.” One group of guys immediately ran towards the lawn and found a stone there, under which the letter was hidden. The second one, having mixed up the homophone words “meadow” and “onion”, ran to the garden bed. But, naturally, they did not find any stone among the bright green rows.

You can change history in such a way that the notes were written by an illiterate scribbler. It was he who, when giving instructions to his team members, used “bow” instead of the word “meadow”. Not knowing how to write paired voiced and voiceless consonants, the “literate” misled the children. As a result, the competition was canceled.

The rule for writing dubious paired consonants according to deafness and voicedness

In fact, checking which letter should be written in a particular case is quite simple. Paired voiced and voiceless consonants raise doubts about the spelling only when they are at the end of a word or are followed by another consonant voiceless sound. If one of these cases occurs, you need to choose a cognate or change the form of the word so that the dubious consonant is followed by a vowel sound. You can also use the option where the letter being tested is followed by a voiced consonant.

Mug - mug, snow - snow, bread - bread; carving - carved, sweat - sweaty.

Didactic game “Connect the word being tested with the test word”

To get more done during class, you can play a game that reinforces skills without recording. Its condition will be a task in which children are asked only to connect test words with the trait being tested. It takes less time, and the work done will be extremely effective.

The game will become more interesting if it is played in the form of a competition. To do this, three variants of tasks are made, where two columns are used. One contains test words. In the other, you need to include those in which voiced and voiceless consonants are in a dubious position. Examples of words could be like this.

First column: bread, ponds, snow, onion, meadows, twig. Second column: onion, bread, meadow, twig, snow, pond.

To complicate the task, you can include in the column with test words those that are not suitable for verification, that is, they are not the same root as those whose spelling there are doubts: snacks, servant, octopus.

Table of consonants according to voicedness and voicelessness

All consonant sounds are divided according to several parameters. During the phonetic analysis of a word in school, characteristics such as softness-hardness, sonority or deafness are indicated. For example, the sound [n] is a consonant, hard, sonorous. And the sound [p] differs from it in only one characteristic: it is not voiced, but dull. The difference between the sounds [р] and [р’] lies only in softness and hardness.

Based on these characteristics, a table is compiled, thanks to which you can determine whether the sound has a softness-hardness pair. After all, some consonants are only soft or only hard.

They also separate voiced and voiceless consonants. The table presented here shows that some sounds do not have a pair on this basis. For example, these are

• y, l, m, n, r;
• x, c, h, sch.

Moreover, the sounds of the first row are voiced, and the sounds of the second are unvoiced. The remaining consonants are paired. It is they that make writing difficult, since a dull sound is often heard where the letter denoting a voiced consonant is written.

Only paired consonants - voiced and voiceless - require verification. The table reflects this point. For example, the sound “b”, falling into the final position or being in front of another voiceless consonant, is itself “deafened”, turning into “p”. That is, the word “hornbeam” (wood species) is pronounced and heard as [grap].

The table shows that these sounds are paired in terms of voicedness and deafness. The same can be called “v” - “f”, “g” - “k”, “d” - “t”, “g” - “w” and “z” - “s”. Although you can add the sound “x” to the “g”-“k” pair, which often sounds in a deafened position in place of “g”: soft - soft[m'ahk'ii], easy - light[l’ohk’ii].

Didactic lotto game “Doubtful consonants”

So that classes in which the spelling of voiced and voiceless consonants is studied do not turn into a tedious routine, they should be diversified. For a didactic game, teachers and parents can prepare special small cards with pictures and words that contain dubious consonant sounds. A dubious consonant can be replaced with dots or asterisks.

Additionally, larger cards should be made, which will contain only letters indicating paired consonants in terms of voicedness and deafness. Cards with pictures are laid out on the table.

At the leader’s signal, the players take them from the table and cover with them the letters on the large card that they think are missing. Whoever closes all the windows before others and without mistakes is considered the winner.

Extracurricular activities in Russian language

Advantageous options for developing interest in this area of ​​science are evenings, competitions, and KVNs. They are held outside school hours for everyone.

It is very important to create an exciting scenario for such an event. Particular attention should be paid to designing activities that are both rewarding and fun. Such activities can be carried out with students of all ages.

Interesting tasks can also be those that contain an element of literary creativity. For example, it is useful to offer the guys:

Make up a story about how the sounds “t” and “d” quarreled;

Come up with as many words with the same root as possible for the word “horn” in one minute;

Write a short quatrain with rhymes: meadow-onion, twig-pond.

Alternation of consonants in Russian

Sometimes, contrary to the laws of spelling, some letters in words are replaced by others. For example, “spirit” and “soul”. Historically (etymologically) they are the same root, but have different letters the roots are “x” and “w”. The same process of alternation of consonants is observed in the words “burden” and “to wear.” But in the latter case, the sound “sh” alternates with the consonant “s”.

However, it should be noted that this is not an alternation of voiced and voiceless consonants making up a pair. This special kind replacement of one sound by another, which occurred in ancient times, at the dawn of the formation of the Russian language.

The following consonant sounds alternate:

• z - f - g (example: friends - to be friends - friend);
• t - h (example: fly - fly);
• ts - ch - k (example: face - personal - face);
• s - w - x (examples: forester - goblin, arable land - to plow);
• w - d - railway (example: leader - driver - driving);
• z - st (example: fantasy - fantastic);
• shch - sk (example: polished - gloss);
• sh - st (example: paved - paved).

Alternation is often referred to as the appearance of the “l” sound in verbs, which in this case has the beautiful name “el epentheticum”. Examples could be pairs of words “love - love”, “feed - feed”, “buy - buy”, “graph - graph”, “catch - catch”, “ruin - ruin”.

The Russian language is so rich, the processes occurring in it are so diverse, that if a teacher tries to find exciting options for working in the classroom, both in the classroom and outside of class, then many teenagers will plunge into the world of knowledge and discovery, and will become truly interested in this school subject.

There's a lot of trouble with letters, that's the kind of people they are.

Sounds change without asking and pretend to be different.

How much trouble these letters and sounds cause for children! Learn the letters, and then remember when and what sound they represent! And there are oh-oh-oh so many sounds. How to remember everything voiced and voiceless consonants?

Everything turns out to be very simple if you set up your child correctly.

I already wrote about it. But consonants are not only hard and soft, but also voiced and unvoiced. And they cause so much trouble for children in the form of mistakes! How to teach a child to identify correctly?

Simply memorizing voiced and voiceless consonants is a losing proposition. Even if the child remembers, it will be very difficult for him to apply this knowledge. But if a child understands how voiced and unvoiced sounds are made, learns to hear them and identify them by their signs, then it will be easy for him to remember.

Let's figure it out ourselves first voiced and voiceless consonants.

In the Russian language, consonant sounds are divided into voiced and voiceless, depending on the participation of the voice in the pronunciation of the sound. How to determine this? Say a single consonant sound and place your hand to your throat. If vocal cords vibrate, then it ringing sound. If not, then you are deaf. Check with your child and pronounce the sounds B - P, M or X. Did you notice?

Voicedness or deafness can be defined differently. Cover your ears with your palms and say a consonant sound. Did you hear a voice or noise? If a voice is heard, then the sound is ringing, if the noise is dull.

And this way you can easily and simply determine voiced or voiceless consonant. At first, this method is very good. But if the child continues this way, then it will take a lot of time. The child will not have time to complete work in class. Therefore, it is necessary for the child to remember voiced and voiceless consonants.

And here we need to remember that the brain can perceive information in different ways - through hearing, vision or sensations. This means that in order for a child to remember information, it is necessary to influence all the child’s systems.

By determining the voicedness and deafness of consonants by ear, we have already included hearing in the work. By putting our hand to our throat, we connected the sensations. Now we need to connect our vision. To do this, you need to make a sign or drawing, where you denote the voiced and voiceless consonants with some symbols.

Voiced and voiceless consonants There are paired and unpaired. This means that when creating such a diagram or tablet, you need to place paired consonants side by side. You can use any symbols that remind the child that the sound is voiced or unvoiced. So in this scheme, voiced consonants are indicated by a bell, and voiceless consonants are indicated by headphones.

Draw a similar sign with your child. Let him independently place the letters near the desired symbol, and you just control and guide the child’s actions. Remember that a person will only remember well what he did on his own.

Play with the placement of letters on floors or houses with the desired symbol several times and the child will perfectly remember the voiced and voiceless consonants. Hang this sign in a visible place and periodically return to it, ask the child to tell, show, name some sounds.

So, by playing, repeating already familiar properties of sounds and letters, you will help your child learn the basics of the Russian language without difficulty, remember voiced and voiceless consonants.

Have questions? Write in the comments to get an answer.

In the meantime, get some positivity and watch a wonderful cartoon. Let's learn from this cheerful monkey to find the good in everything.

In the Russian language there are voiced and voiceless consonants. When studying phonetics (the study of speech sounds) and graphics (the study of letters of the alphabet), it is necessary to clearly know which sounds are unvoiced and which are voiced.

What is it for?

The fact is that in the Russian language, letters denoting voiced consonants are not necessarily read voiced in all cases. There are also cases when letters denoting dull sounds are read loudly. The correct correlation of letters and sounds will significantly help in learning the rules of writing words.

Let us examine in more detail what the concepts of deafness and voicedness mean. The formation of voiced consonants occurs due to noise and voice: air jet not only overcomes the obstacle in the oral cavity, but also vibrates the vocal cords.

• The following sounds are voiced: b, v, g, d, zh, z, l, m, n, r, y.
• However, in phonetics, from this series of sounds, so-called sonorant sounds are also distinguished, which are as close as possible in their characteristics to vowel sounds: they can be sung and prolonged in speech. These sounds include y, r, l, n, m.

Voiceless consonant sounds are pronounced without the participation of the voice, only with the help of noise, while the vocal cords are relaxed.

• These letters and sounds include the following: k, p, s, t, f, x, c, ch, sh, shch. In order to make it easier to remember all the voiceless consonants in the Russian language, you need to learn the phrase: “Styopka, do you want shchetc?” - “Fi!” All consonant sounds in it are unvoiced.

Pairs of voiced and voiceless consonants

Voiced and unvoiced sounds and the letters denoting them are contrasted in Russian and form pairs:

1. b-p,
2. w-f,
3. g-k,
4. d-t,
5. ss,
6. w-sh.

If we take into account that the consonants in these pairs can also be soft (except zh-sh), then there are a total of 11 contrasting pairs of deafness-voicedness. The listed sounds are called paired. The remaining voiced and unvoiced sounds do not have pairs. The voiced unpaired ones include the above sonorants, and the voiceless ones include x, c, ch, shch. The table of consonants presented on our website will help you study these sounds in more detail.

Click on the picture to print a table with voiced and voiceless consonants

How is it that letters in the Russian alphabet can represent several sounds?

Features of the pronunciation of a sound are often predetermined by its position in a word. Thus, a voiced sound at the end of a word is deafened, and this position of the sound is called “weak”. Stunning can also occur before the next voiceless consonant, for example: pond, booth. We write voiced consonants and pronounce: twig, butka.

Conversely, a voiceless consonant can become voiced if it is followed by a voiced sound: threshing, but we pronounce malad ba. Knowing this feature of Russian phonetics, we check the spelling of consonants at the end and middle of a word using test words: molotba - thresh, pond-ponds, booth - booth. We select the test word so that after the dubious consonant there is a vowel.

To remember what a sound is according to its characteristics, it is necessary to make mental associations of the sound with some object, event or natural sound. For example, the sound sh is similar to the rustling of leaves, and the sound z is similar to the hum of bees. The association will help you find your way in time. Another way is to create a phrase with a specific set of sounds.

Thus, knowing the letter-sound relationship is extremely important for spelling and correct pronunciation. Without studying phonetics, it is impossible to study and correctly perceive the melody of a language.

Video lesson about voiced and voiceless consonants:

Tralik and Valik about voiced and voiceless consonants

Another video lesson for children with riddles about voiced and voiceless consonants

As you know, speech sounds can be divided into vowels (pronounced only by voice) and consonants (noise is involved in their pronunciation). Many consonants can be paired according to their characteristics, but not all.

Paired and unpaired consonants according to deafness-voicing

It should be noted right away that there are only four such sounds that are unpaired in all respects. We'll talk about them at the end of the article. The majority fits into a couple based on one characteristic, but not on another. Therefore, it makes no sense to write about the consonant “unpaired” - you need to indicate on what basis.

Consonants differ in deafness and voicedness. This means that when pronouncing some of them, more voice is used (sonorant, voiced), while others use more noise (voiceless) or even just one noise (hissing).

Sonorants are very sonorous consonants, they have a lot of voice, but little noise.

Two sonorant consonants - [L] and [R] - can even, under some circumstances, form a syllable, that is, behave like vowels. Surely you have come across the erroneous spelling “theator”. It is explained precisely by the fact that [P] in this word is syllabic. Other examples are the words “Alexander”, “meaning”.

Unpaired voiced consonant sounds are just sonorant sounds. There are five of them:

Sometimes [Y] is not classified as sonorant, but it still remains voiced unpaired. Let's look at the table.

It shows that, in addition to unpaired voiced sounds, there are also unpaired unpaired sounds. Most of them are fizzy; Only the dull unpaired consonant sound [Ts] does not belong to hissing sounds.

In this article we consider only Russian speech sounds. In other languages, the pairing may be different. For example, in the Tibetan language there is a voiceless pair to a voiced [L].

Hardness-softness pairs

In addition to deafness and voicedness, Russian consonants form pairs based on hardness and softness.

This means that some of them are perceived by ear as softer. Then we usually indicate this in writing somehow: for example, we write soft sign or one of the vowels E, Yo, Yu, Ya.

Oral speech is primary (everyone understands that it appeared before written speech), so it is incorrect to say: “The sound [N’] in the word HORSE is soft, because it is followed by b.” On the contrary, we write b because H' is soft.

According to hardness-softness, consonants also form pairs. But even in this case, not everything. In the Russian language there are unpaired soft and unpaired hard consonants.

Unpaired hard consonant sounds are mainly hissing sounds ([Zh], [Sh]) and [C]. They always form at the far palate.

But in the ancestor of our language, Old Church Slavonic, on the contrary, [ZH] and [SH] were always soft and did not have a hard pair. Then [K], [G] and [X] were not soft. Nowadays you can find (once the only possible) pronunciation with a soft [Zh’] [DROZH’ZH’I] or [DOZH’] (rain), but this is no longer necessary.

Unpaired soft ones are [Y’] and again hissing [H’] and [Ш’].

That is, all hissing ones are either always hard or always soft. The letter b after them does not indicate softness, it performs a grammatical function (for example, even without knowing what “baldness” is, anyone will immediately say that this is the word female, because in the masculine gender b is not placed after hissing words). Hard unpaired hissing consonant sounds in a word may have b with them, but this does not mean that they should soften. This means that we have a 3rd declension noun, an adverb or a verb.

Unpaired soft consonant sounds in a word make you want to put b after them, which is often not required. Therefore, it makes sense to remember that in combinations CHK, CHN, etc. b after h is not needed.

The sounds are “completely unpaired”

In the Russian language, most consonants are either paired according to both characteristics, or paired according to one characteristic and unpaired according to another. For example, in the word [P'EN'] (stump) the sound [P'] is paired both in deafness-voicing (P' - B'), and in hardness-softness (P' - P), and the sound [N'] is paired in terms of hardness-softness (N' - N), but unpaired in deafness-voiceness.

However, there are several sounds that are unpaired in both characteristics. These are the sounds [Y'] (unpaired voiced, unpaired soft), [Ch'] (unpaired soft, unpaired deaf), [Sh'] (unpaired soft, unpaired deaf) and [Ts] (unpaired hard, unpaired deaf). Such sounds are often made in Russian language Olympiads. For example,“Guess the sound by its characteristics: unpaired hard, unpaired dull.” We already see that this is [C].

What have we learned?

From the article about paired and unpaired consonants, we learned that in the Russian language there are both paired and unpaired consonants. Paired consonants differ in deafness-voicing and in hardness-softness.

Test on the topic

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Sound is the smallest unit of language pronounced with the help of the organs of the speech apparatus. Scientists have discovered that at birth, the human ear perceives all the sounds it hears. All this time, his brain sorts out unnecessary information, and by 8-10 months a person is able to distinguish sounds that are exclusively native language, and all the nuances of pronunciation.

33 letters make up the Russian alphabet, 21 of them are consonants, but letters must be distinguished from sounds. A letter is a sign, a symbol that can be seen or written. The sound can only be heard and pronounced, and in writing it can be designated using transcription - [b], [c], [d]. They carry a certain semantic load, connecting with each other to form words.

36 consonant sounds: [b], [z], [v], [d], [g], [zh], [m], [n], [k], [l], [t], [p ], [t], [s], [sch], [f], [ts], [w], [x], [h], [b"], [z"], [v"], [ d"], [th"], [n"], [k"], [m"], [l"], [t"], [s"], [p"], [r"], [ f"], [g"], [x"].

Consonant sounds are divided into:

• soft and hard;

voiced and voiceless;

paired and unpaired.

Soft and hard consonants

The phonetics of the Russian language is significantly different from many other languages. It contains hard and soft consonants.

At the moment of pronunciation soft sound the tongue is pressed harder against the palate than when pronouncing a hard consonant, preventing the release of air. This is what distinguishes a hard and soft consonant sound from each other. In order to determine in writing whether a consonant sound is soft or hard, you should look at the letter immediately after the specific consonant.

Consonant sounds are classified as hard in the following cases:

• if letters a, o, u, e, s follow after them - [poppy], [rum], [hum], [juice], [bull];
• after them there is another consonant sound - [vors], [hail], [marriage];
• if the sound is at the end of the word - [darkness], [friend], [table].

The softness of sound is written as an apostrophe: mole - [mol’], chalk - [m’el], wicket - [kal’itka], pir - [p’ir].

It should be noted that the sounds [ш'], [й'], [ч'] are always soft, and hard consonants are only [ш], [тс], [ж].

A consonant sound will become soft if it is followed by “b” and vowels: i, e, yu, i, e. For example: gen - [g"en], flax - [l"on], disk - [d"ysk] , hatch - [l "uk", elm - [v "yaz", trill - [tr "el"].

Voiced and voiceless, paired and unpaired sounds

Based on their sonority, consonants are divided into voiced and voiceless. Voiced consonants can be sounds created with the participation of the voice: [v], [z], [zh], [b], [d], [y], [m], [d], [l], [r] , [n].

Examples: [bor], [ox], [shower], [call], [heat], [goal], [fishing], [pestilence], [nose], [genus], [swarm].

Examples: [kol], [floor], [volume], [sleep], [noise], [shch"uka], [choir], [king"], [ch"an].

Paired voiced and voiceless consonants include: [b] - [p], [zh] - [w], [g] - [x], [z] - [s]. [d] - [t], [v] - [f]. Examples: reality - dust, house - volume, year - code, vase - phase, itch - court, live - sew.

Sounds that do not form pairs: [h], [n], [ts], [x], [p], [m], [l].

Soft and hard consonants can also have a pair: [p] - [p"], [p] - [p"], [m] - [m"], [v] - [v"], [d] - [ d"], [f] - [f"], [k] - [k"], [z] - [z"], [b] - [b"], [g] - [g"], [ n] - [n"], [s] - [s"], [l] - [l"], [t] - [t"], [x] - [x"]. Examples: byl - bel, height - branch, city - cheetah, dacha - business, umbrella - zebra, skin - cedar, moon - summer, monster - place, finger - feather, ore - river, soda - sulfur, pillar - steppe, lantern - farm, mansions - hut.

Table for memorizing consonants

To clearly see and compare soft and hard consonants, the table below shows them in pairs.

Another table will help you remember consonant sounds.

Children's poems for better mastery of the material

There are exactly 33 letters in the Russian alphabet,

To find out how many consonants -

Subtract ten vowels

Signs - hard, soft -

It will immediately become clear:

The resulting number is exactly twenty-one.

Soft and hard consonants are very different,

But not dangerous at all.

If we pronounce it with noise, then they are deaf.

The consonant sounds proudly say:

They sound different.

Hard and soft

In fact, very light.

Remember one simple rule forever:

W, C, F - always hard,

But Ch, Shch, J are only soft,

Like a cat's paws.

And let’s soften others like this:

If we add a soft sign,

Then we get spruce, moth, salt,

What a cunning sign!

And if we add the vowels I, I, Yo, E, Yu,

We get a soft consonant.

Brother signs, soft, hard,

We don't pronounce

But to change the word,

Let's ask for their help.

The rider rides on a horse,

Con - we use it in the game.