Oral consonant - Definition and Overview

An oral consonant is a consonant sound in speech that is made by allowing air to escape from the mouth. To create an intended oral consonant sound, the entire mouth plays a role in modifying the air's passageway. This rapid modification of the air passageway using the tongue and lips makes changes to the waveform of the sound by compressing and expanding the air. In addition to the nose and mouth, the vocal cords and lungs also make a contribution to producing speech by controlling the volume (amplitude) and pitch (frequency) of the sound. The vast majority of consonants are oral consonants. The others are nasal consonants.

See also

• manner of articulation
• list of phonetics topics