In the first lesson, you learned the stop consonants. In this lesson, we'll teach you the fricatives.

												
v	f	dh	th	z	s	zh	sh	dz	ts	dj	ch	chʰ

These six pairs all include a voiced consonant and its unvoiced twin. Most of the transcriptions are good guides to the pronunciation, but:

• dh is the sound of th in the mother bathes,
• zh is the sound of s in measure and ge in beige,
• As with p t k, we pronounce ch with a small puff of air at the beginning of words and at the beginning of stressed syllables within words, so you should spell it with the aspirated letter chʰ in those cases.

You'll notice that the bottom of the  pair has a "stilt" that's missing from the bottoms of the  letters from lesson 0, even though they're all pronounced at the front of the mouth. That's because  are spoken with the bottom lip against the top teeth, while the others are all spoken with your lips together.

Fricatives

Sibilants

Affricates

The affricates dz and ts aren't phonemes of English. but they're quite common as a result of adding an s to form a plural, a possessive, a contraction, or a 3rd person present verb: leads lead's or cats cat's what's eats. We always write words like these with affricate letters, not d+z or t+s.

Exercises

Ready for a quiz? Choose the right letter for the first sound in each word.

											
these
cheap
sheep
jump
   	At least 1 is wrong				All 4 are right				Check all 4

Now choose the right letter for the last sound in each word.

											
soothe
switch
fishes
tough
   	At least 1 is wrong				All 4 are right				Check all 4

Change the gender of the following. There are some letters you don't know yet, but just read through them.

								




			At least 1 is wrong		All 4 are right		Check all 4

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