Tricky Consonant Sounds  

Many consonants have a one-to-one relationship with the sounds they make—that is, a certain consonant letter will generally make the same consonant sound no matter where it appears in a word. However, some consonant sounds can be made by several different letters when they appear in certain parts of a word or in combination with other consonants. Many of these are covered in the section on consonant digraphs, but there are a few sounds that can be made by several different single letters as well, which is what we’ll focus on in this section. We’ll also take a close look at the letter S, as it can produce a wide range of speech sounds.

The consonant sound /k/ can be produced by the consonants C, K and X, as well as the consonant digraphs CC and CK and the combination QU.

C most often produces the hard /k/ sound when it come before the vowels A, O, and U; when it is followed by the consonants L, R, and T; or when it is the last letter of a word with two or more syllables. For example:

As a single letter, K is most often used to form the /k/ sound when it is followed by the vowels E, I, or Y, or at the end of one-syllable words when preceded by another consonant or a vowel digraph. For example:

While the letter X does commonly create the /k/ sound, it does so in combination with the sibilant speech sounds /s/ and /ʃ/, which are pronounced much more distinctly than /k/.

X forms the /ks/ sound when it appears at the end of a word, after a consonant, or between two vowels (if the first one is stressed in the word). For example:

The much less common /kʃ/ sound occurs when X is followed by the suffixes “-ious,” “-ion,” and “-ual.” For instance:

We can also form the /k/ sound with the digraph CC following most of the same rules for “hard C” that we’ve seen already—that is, CC will produce the /k/ sound when it is followed by A, O, U, L or R. (No words are spelled CCT.)

CC also creates the /ks/ sound when it is followed by E, I, or, in one case, Y:

While K is used on its own to form the /k/ sound at the ends of words when it comes after vowel digraphs or other consonants, the consonant digraph CK is used when the /k/ sound is at the end of single-syllable words following a short vowel sound.

For example:

In multi-syllable words, it more often appears in the middle when it is followed by ET, LE, or, less commonly, O.

For example:

Other than in certain foreign loanwords, the consonant Q is always followed by the letter U, and the two letters together usually form the sound /kw/. If the sound /kw/ occurs within a single syllable, and the word is not a compound, it will almost always be spelled QU. For example:

Less commonly, QU simply forms a hard /k/ sound. This can occur when QU is followed by a silent E at the end of a word, or when it is followed by a vowel + R or T in the middle of a word. For example:

The consonant sound /z/ is most often associated with the consonant letter Z, because the correlation between the sound and that letter is very reliable. However, there are a few other letters (and combinations of letters) that can also result in the /z/ sound.

Z most often appears in the middle of a word after a vowel, but it can also appear at the beginning or (less commonly) end of a word. For example:

Z also usually maintains the /z/ pronunciation if it is doubled in the middle or at the end of a word, as in:

S only produces the /z/ sound when it appears in the middle or at the end of certain words. Unfortunately, there are no reliable spelling cues to indicate when S is pronounced /z/ rather than /s/ in this position, so we just have to memorize such words or check a dictionary. For example:

One of the few instances in which S is reliably pronounced /z/ is when the letter combination SM appears at the end of a word (most often as a part of the suffix “-ism”). For example:

At the end of a word, S will be pronounced /z/ if it follows any vowel sound or any consonant sound other than /f/, /k/, /p/, /t/, and /θ/.

There are also a handful of words in which the consonant digraph SS forms the /z/ sound (as opposed to its usual /s/ sound) when it appears between two vowels:

The letter X almost always forms a blend of consonant sounds. Most of the time, it is the blend /ks/, as in tax (/tæks/). However, when it appears immediately before a stressed vowel sound (and almost always after the letter E) at the beginning of a word, it becomes voiced as the combination /gz/. For instance:

(Note that the H is silent in the last two of these examples.)

There are also a few words in which X only forms the /z/ sound, though most of these are not common in everyday speech and writing. For example:

Unlike most consonant sounds, the sound /ʒ/ does not have a specific letter or digraph commonly associated with it. Instead, the /ʒ/ sound occurs when various consonants appear next to or between certain vowels.

The most common consonant that forms the /ʒ/ sound is S when it is followed by a specific suffix and (usually) preceded by a vowel. For example:

The letter G takes a “soft” pronunciation when it appears after a vowel and immediately before an E, I, or Y. While /ʤ/ is the most common speech sound used for a soft G, the /ʒ/ sound is formed in some French loanwords ending in GE. For example:

Like soft G, the letter J occasionally produces the /ʒ/ sound instead of the normal /ʤ/ sound, though this only happens in foreign loanwords. For example:

The letter S can sometimes be problematic for pronunciation due to the wide range of speech sounds it can represent. Its most common sound is the unvoiced sibilant /s/, made by forcing air between the tongue and roof of the mouth and out past the teeth without engaging the vocal cords. As we saw previously, S also commonly represents this sound’s voiced counterpart, /z/, formed the same way but with the vocal cords engaged.

Which pronunciation the letter forms is much easier to determine when it appears at the beginning or end of a word.

S is almost always pronounced /s/ if it appears at the beginning of a word, as in:

The only exceptions to this rule are the words sugar and sure, both of which begin with the /ʃ/ sound (the sound associated with the consonant digraph SH).

When the suffixes “-s,” “-es,” or “-’s” are added to a word to form a plural, the grammatical third person, a contraction, or a possessive, then we can determine how it will be pronounced by looking at the speech sound immediately before it.

S is always pronounced /s/ when coming after an unvoiced, non-sibilant consonant sound—that is, after /k/, /f/, /p/, /t/, and /θ/ (the unvoiced TH sound). For example:

If S comes after a voiced consonant sound (/b/, /d/, /g/, /l/, /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /r/, /ð/, /v/) or a vowel sound, the S will be pronounced as /z/. When adding “-s” to a word that ends in a voiced or unvoiced sibilant speech sound (/s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /ʧ/, /ʤ/), the suffix becomes “-es” and is pronounced /ɪz/. (The same pronunciation is used if an apostrophe-S is added to a word with a sibilant speech sound at the end.)

For example:

When a word ends naturally in a single S (that is, it is not a suffix), it usually tends to be the unvoiced /s/ pronunciation. However, there are a few words that are pronounced /z/ instead, with no indication from the spelling alone. For example:

Like words that begin with S, words that end in SS always make the /s/ sound. For example:

When S is followed by a silent E, it will reliably create the /s/ sound when it follows four specific consonants: L, N, P, and R. For example:

When “-se” comes after a vowel sound, it is much trickier to predict. Unfortunately, the only time we can be sure of S’s pronunciation is when a word has the same spelling but has two pronunciations, one for a noun (or adjective) and one for a verb. When this is the case, the noun form will be pronounced with a final /s/, while the verb form will be pronounced with a final /z/. Otherwise, there is no clear pattern to when “-se” will be pronounced /s/ or /z/.

For example:

The conventions and patterns for how to pronounce S in the middle of a word are too varied and extensive to summarize here, but you can continue on to the section Pronouncing the Letter S to learn more.

In addition to /s/ and /z/, S can also form the /ʃ/ (as in wash) and /ʒ/ (as in beige) sounds when it appears in combination with certain suffixes. We saw earlier how it forms the /ʒ/ sound when this combination comes after a vowel; however, several of the same combinations will yield the /ʃ/ sound if they come after L, N, or another S. For example: