“Suddenly a friend felt sad, soon he will meet the enemy again…” But why did the reader of these lines feel sad too? Empathy for the lyrical hero? Undoubtedly. But there is also something invisible at first glance. What if you try to read the sentence aloud? Get ready for a tongue shake and explosion. Let's figure out what a confluence of consonants is. It will be interesting.
Confluence of consonants: how much?
“Vdr”, “vzgr”, “stn”, even the strange “sdr” at the junction of words… Such a number of consonants per square centimeter is a clear enumeration for the language of an average person. And this phenomenon is called simply and figuratively: a confluence of consonants. What is this?
To clearly explain what a consonant cluster is, let's look at what in any language is called the norm and deviation from it. From the point of view of phonetics, the most convenient scheme for pronunciation is the alternation of a vowel and a consonant sound. It is no coincidence that words like “mother”, “woman”, “bibi” are most quickly and easily picked up from adults by kids. Such words are convenient for learning in any foreign language.
How are they?
The Italian language is not in vain considered one of the mostmelodic. The abundance of vowels and their frequent alternation with consonants makes speech voiced and iridescent, which is worth only the well-known "amore" or "cinema".
Also, a cluster of two consonants is within the normal range. Many Russian words, for example, "friend", "enemy", "ringing", "shout", are included in this group. The German language is known for its diverse combinations of consonants. "Schmetterling", "Duft", "Schritt" - these words are expressive in their own way, beautiful in their clarity and also easy to remember.
But the Serbian and Czech languages were less fortunate. “Chrli vrh”, which means just “black peak”, sounds infernal. And behind the ominous "trdlo" lies a delicious bun. And these are no exceptions at all.
Records for hard-to-pronounce words beats the Georgian language. What is only worth "gvprtskvnis" - nine consecutive and separately pronounced consonants.
In English there is the word latchstring (rope from the heck) - 6 consonants in a row. It is worth noting that there are 5 sounds in this combination [le tchstring]. We hasten to reassure all English learners that such a confluence of consonants is rare. The maximum here is 4 consonants in plural forms: attempts, bursts, as well as in ordinal numbers sixth, twelfth.
Words with three consonants are not uncommon for the Russian language. "Sigh", "scream", "adult", "strive", "revenge"… You can easily notice that such noisy trios meet (and here's another example!)at the beginning of a word. This option is more or less acceptable. But the short forms of some adjectives can make you smile. Round, kind, dull, callous - is it possible to say about a person "He is callous" and not smile? Even if this characterization is true. Why is this happening?
Where consonants merge
It's all about where consonants converge: at the end of a word, in its middle, or at the beginning. As a rule, the beginning of any word is pronounced with greater voice power and speed. This facilitates the articulation of several consonants in a row, as if they are flying through the air. Hence the hidden energy of the word "explosion" - the confluence of consonants here describes this phenomenon in the best possible way. The words "take off", "shot" are similar in effect. Very often, such words denote a sharp, impetuous and short-term action. Agree that such a confluence of consonants is very justified. And beautiful.
Words with a confluence of consonants at the end, on the contrary, sound ponderous. Cedar, beaver, fact… However, as soon as a vowel becomes at the end of a word, the confluence of consonants is almost lost: "tundra". The same happens with the plural forms: "cedars", "facts". But the forms of the genitive plural of some nouns may well slow down the pace of speech: "feelings", "actions", "sets".
Meeting place can be changed
Speaking of the "meeting place", one cannot fail to mention the random confluence of consonant letters at the junction of words or morphemes. A classic example frombad poem for children: "Bobblehead is furious." With such a pandemonium of deaf consonants, not only the baby doll will go crazy! Whistling [s] and [h] completely dissolve the innocent [c] between them, erase the word boundary and, when pronounced quickly, make the phrase incomprehensible.
Counterstrategy, filter press, burgomastership, denationalization… These monsters in literal form are just words that are not very lucky with prefixes and suffixes. Often the foreign origin of either the prefix (counter-), or the root (burgomaster), or both roots (filter and press) is to blame. It is worth rejoicing that such words, as a rule, have a narrow specialization.
Clip out
Hello! It's so easy to say this word. But writing is not very good. Three consonants at the beginning and four in the middle make one of the friendliest words unapproachable in appearance. But what happened to human language? Very simple. He threw out an indistinct sound [v] from the pronunciation. Some go even further, shortening it to "hello," "drase," or "gift." The bottom line is that if a word is used very often in everyday speech, its pronunciation should not make it difficult to talk. “Sun”, “late”, “heart”, “godfather” in oral speech safely lost uncomfortable consonants, unnecessarily straining the tongue. But look at the single-root “sunny”, “late”, “cordial”, “christening”. Very similar, but different words. The consonant cluster in them is divided into two parts by vowels, and each consonant receives its portion of power.
Can't there be too much publicity?
We have already figured out that a lot of consonants in a row is bad and inconvenient for smooth human speech. What about long vowel lines?
Audio equipment, hydroaeroionization, radioactivity… It is easy to see that vowel confluences occur at the junction of stems in compound words. As a rule, these are complex scientific terms that we rarely use in everyday life. If you try to read such words aloud, you can hear that they are involuntarily divided into two or three shorter ones (according to the number of bases). Still, vowels are easier to handle due to the greater participation of the voice in their pronunciation.
Patters
It would seem that the confluence of consonants is an ideal phenomenon for tongue twisters. This is where everyone smashes tongues to smithereens! Let's analyze the most popular tongue twisters in Russian.
- Sasha walked along the highway and sucked dry.
- There is grass in the yard, firewood on the grass. Do not cut wood on the grass of the yard.
- Aground, we lazily caught burbot and we exchanged burbot for tench. Did you kindly pray for love, did you beckon me into the mists of Liman.
Very colorful picture turned out. Well-known tongue twisters, it turns out, do not contain a single furious confluence of consonants! The maximum here is two consonants in a row [dr], [tr], [shk]. But these combinations are widespread and easy.
Mostly, tongue twisters are aimed at honing simple consonant-vowel syllables similar to each other. Thus, the tongue twister improves the pace and fluency of speech.at the same time.
There are several tongue twisters with a confluence of consonants. However, they are not as famous.
- Wipe the portrait. Wipe the portrait gently.
- It costs more to maintain a vehicle than to spend money on transport.
- Route routed routed yes not routed.
Speech will not become more elegant from such verbal exercises, and therefore it is better to use the old tried and tested fruits of folk art.
Summarize
Confluence of consonants is a phenomenon that exists in many languages of the world. For some languages it is the norm, in others it is unacceptable. Very often, the abundance of consonants makes it difficult to speak and impair understanding (especially at the junction of words). Nevertheless, this phenomenon gives expressiveness to some words, especially if used at the beginning of a lexeme. Shaking and bursting the tongue can sometimes be very helpful.
