Few people in everyday life think about the classification of sounds that people use in speech. Some of the school Russian language course remembers that there are vowels and consonants, and the latter are still paired and are divided into voiced and deaf, and there are also hissing ones. But this is far from a complete list. Will an ordinary schoolboy answer the question, what is a sonorous sound? Hardly.
Classification of speech sounds
Those who are interested in philology and receive specialized education find out during the learning process that sounds are also divided according to the method of extraction, localization and other characteristic features. They are best known by specialists - speech pathologists-defectologists, as well as linguists specializing in phonetics.
There are several classifications according to various criteria, both in the acoustic and physiological sense. This is the main division used by phonetists. It is to the physiology of sound production that the division of sounds into vowels, consonants and their further division into subcategories belongs. Classification from the point of view of acoustics is not known to everyone. That's whyit will be extremely interesting to consider it.
Acoustic classification
First of all, there are vocal and non-vocal sounds. When pronouncing the former, the voice is involved, so that all vowels and some consonants are vocal. Further distinguish between consonant and non-consonant sounds. The first includes all consonants, and the rest - vowels. There is also a category of sharp ones, those that differ in the heterogeneity of the sound spectrum, for example, [ts] or [p] fall into it. The rest are classified as unsharp. Since school, the division into voiced and deaf is familiar, but from the point of view of acoustics, vowels and consonants, which are not paired, also belong to voiced. There are several other criteria, but they mostly depend on the vocal 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, they are vocal. When pronouncing such sounds, there are practically no obstacles for exhaled air. Why are they so interesting?
Sonic
The name of this category comes from Latin, where sonorus means "voiced". And they really can not be called deaf. According to the theory, a sonorant sound, when pronounced, does not create turbulent airflow in the vocal tract, that is, in the larynx, pharynx, oral cavity and nose. In fact, the voice simply prevails over the noise, that is, the movements of the lips, tongue, cheeks are minimal. In Russian, such sounds include [m], [n], [l], [p] and[j]. All of them, except the last one, form a soft pair - [m'], [n'], [l'] and [p'].
The features of sonorous sounds are such that, despite belonging to consonants, they are very close to vowels in structure. In addition, they sound more pleasant to the ear, melodious. This feature is used by poets and writers in such a technique as sound recording. It is the sonants, as they are also called, that become the first consonant sounds pronounced by children. And this is due precisely to the ease in their articulation and formation. By the way, it is the sonorants that are most often the "core" of the syllable, its most sonorous and noticeable part.
Sonants in other languages
Naturally, sonorous sounds are used not only in Russian speech. Examples can be found in many other languages, especially Italian and Spanish, which make them sound smooth and beautiful. There are two sonants in English, which have no analogues in Russian. We are talking about [ŋ] and [w]. The sonorant sound [ŋ] refers to voiced nasals and is pronounced very differently from the usual [n], and [w] is very reminiscent of a vowel and is pronounced with the lips so that something like a short [ue] is obtained. There are few sonants in German, pinching, whistling sounds and affricates prevail there, which is why it seems to many that it is so rude to the ear. In non-European languages there is also such a category as "sonorous sound", and the variety of phonemes included there is amazing.
