Oral consonant
An
oral consonant is a
consonant sound in
speech that is made by allowing air to escape from the mouth. To create an intended oral consonant sound, the entire mouth plays a role in modifying the air's passageway. This rapid modification of the air passageway using the tongue and lips makes changes to the
waveform of the sound by compressing and expanding the air. In addition to the nose and mouth, the
vocal cords and
lungs also make a contribution to producing speech by controlling the volume (
amplitude) and
pitch (
frequency) of the sound. The vast majority of consonants are oral consonants. The others are
nasal consonants.
*
manner of articulation*
list of phonetics topics
