The system of English phonemes: consonants.
A phoneme of a language or dialect is an abstraction of a speech sound or of a group of different sounds which are all perceived to have the same function by speakers of that particular language or dialect.
The following table shows the 24 consonant phonemes found in most dialects of English, in addition to /x/, whose distribution is more limited. Fortis consonants are always voiceless, aspirated in syllable onset (except in clusters beginning with /s/), and sometimes also glottalized to an extent in syllable coda (most likely to occur with /t/, see T-glottalization), while lenis consonants are always unaspirated and un-glottalized, and generally partially or fully voiced. The alveolars are usually apical, i.e. pronounced with the tip of the tongue touching or approaching the roof of the mouth, though some speakers produce them laminally, i.e. with the blade of the tongue.
· Most varieties of English have syllabic consonants in some words, principally [l̩, m̩, n̩], for example at the end of bottle, rhythm and button. In such cases, no phonetic vowel is pronounced between the last two consonants, and the last consonant forms a syllable on its own.
· /θ, ð/ are realized as stops in accents affected by th-stopping, such as Hiberno-English and the New York accent. They are merged with /f, v/ in accents affected by th-fronting, such as some varieties of Cockney and African American Vernacular English.
· The voiceless velar fricative is mainly used in Hiberno-, Scottish, South African and Welsh English; words with in Scottish accents tend to be pronounced with /k/ in other dialects. The velar fricative sometimes appears in recent loanwords such as chutzpah.
· This phoneme is conventionally transcribed with the basic Latin letter (the IPA symbol for the alveolar trill), even though its pronunciation is usually a postalveolar approximant. The trill does exist but it is rare, found only in Scottish dialects and sporadically in Received Pronunciation preceding a stressed vowel in highly emphatic speech or when placing special emphasis on a word. See Pronunciation of English /r/.
· The sound at the beginning of huge in most accents is a voiceless palatal fricative [ç], but this is analysed phonemically as the consonant cluster /hj/ so that huge is transcribed /hjuːdʒ/. As with /hw/, this does not mean that speakers pronounce [h] followed by [j]; the phonemic transcription /hj/ is simply a convenient way of representing the single sound
In some conservative accents in Scotland, Ireland, the southern United States, and New England, the digraph ⟨wh⟩ in words like which and whine represents a voiceless w sound [ʍ], a voiceless labiovelar fricative or approximant, which contrasts with the voiced w of witch and wine. In most dialects, this sound is lost, and is pronounced as a voiced w (the wine–whinemerger
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