Lesson I.A.2: Consonants

Here's a chart, borrowed from the International Phonetic Association, that shows all the humanly possible consonants (not including clicks and such...) arranged by place and manner of articulation:

You'll notice there are many more consonants there than in our previous chart of American English consonants. You've also probably noticed that many of the symbols are NOT what you saw on that last chart. :-) Our next step is to learn those symbols, which make up the International Phonetic Alphabet. For more information on the IPA and some useful charts (many of which I'm borrowing for this lesson), check out the International Phonetic Association's web site. After you've learned the IPA symbols, we'll have to learn ASCII versions of them so we can write about sounds without having to use all sorts of fonts or graphics...
Note: You may wish to print out or bookmark this chart for reference...

IPA Symbols for American English Consonants

IPA	As found in	Description	ASCII symbol we will use
	pill	Voiceless bilabial stop	p
	till	Voiceless alveolar stop	t
	kill	Voiceless velar stop	k
	bill	Voiced bilabial stop	b
	dill	Voiced alveolar stop	d
	gill	Voiced velar stop	g
	mill	Nasal Bilabial Stop	m
	nil	Nasal Alveolar Stop	n
	ring	Nasal Velar Stop	N
	feel	Voiceless Labiodental Fricative	f
	seal	Voiceless Alveolar Fricative	s
	heal	Voiceless Glottal Fricative	h
	veal	Voiced Labiodental Fricative	v
	zeal	Voiced Alveolar Fricative	z
	thigh	Voiceless Dental Fricative	T
	thy	Voiced Dental Fricative	D
	shell	Voiceless Palatal (Postalveolar) Fricative	S
	azure	Voiced Palatal (Postalveolar) Fricative	Z
	chill	Voiceless Palatal Africate	C
	jill	Voiced Palatal Africate	J
	leaf	Alveolar Lateral Liquid (Approximant)	l
	reef	Alveolar Liquid (Approximant)	r - untrilled, r[trl] - trilled ()
	you	Palatal Glide (Approximant)	j
	witch	Voiced Labial-Velar Glide (Approximant)	w
	which	Voiceless Labial-Velar Glide (Approximant)	w[vls]
	uh-oh	Glottal Stop	?

For the other consonants on the chart, you can work from the place and manner of articulation to figure out what they sound like. Even though they're not found in English we could certainly use them in TGL if we like. Here's some common ones:

IPA	As found in	Description	ASCII symbol we will use
	Bach	Voiceless Velar Fricative	x
	brun or rouge	Uvular Fricative	R

If there are any other non-English consonants you'd like to incorporate into TGL, we can come up with ASCII symbols for them also.