Let’s explore the difference between voiced and unvoiced sounds-specific to letter sounds.
In this blog and video series, I’ve been comparing pairs of literacy terms to help you as you teach your learners. For example, voiced and unvoiced sounds. What are they? Does it even help to know the difference? {My answer is, “YES!” in case you were wondering.}
Find all the videos and posts in this series by clicking one the images at the very bottom of this post.
The following text in this blog post is part of what you’ll find in my video.
Watch the full video on my YouTube channel.
Voiced and Unvoiced Sounds: What’s the difference?
Let’s start with voiced sounds. Voiced sounds require your vocal folds (or vocal cords) to vibrate.
Just so we’re on the same page in our understanding, your vocal folds are thin flaps of tissue located in your larynx. When air travels through your larynx, your vocal folds can vibrate together to create sound, which allows you to speak or sing.
This is a quick drawing and close up of the vocal folds.
Some examples of voiced sounds are /m/, /v/, and /a/. When you make a voiced sound, you can place your hand on your throat and feel your vocal folds vibrating. Another way you can know if a sound is voiced is if you can sing on it.
More examples of voiced consonant sounds are the sounds represented by these letters: b, d, g, j, l, m, n, r, v, w, y, and z.
All of these require the vocal folds to vibrate, which you can feel when you make the sound.
Something to keep in mind is that all vowel sounds are voiced sounds. As a matter of fact, when you sing, the voiced vowel sounds are what you mainly use.
Unvoiced sounds, on the other hand, are sounds that DO NOT require your vocal folds to vibrate.
Some examples of unvoiced sounds are /k/, /s/, and /t/. Notice, when you make an unvoiced sound, you do not feel your vocal folds vibrating.
Some examples of unvoiced consonant sounds are the sounds that are represented by these letters: c, f, k, p, s, t, and ch. None of these sounds require the vocal folds to vibrate. And remember, we won’t have any vowels in the unvoiced category.
The symbols you might see in some of my resources, like my spelling folder, are the sound icon to show voiced sounds and the mute icon to show unvoiced sounds.
Do voiced and unvoiced sounds even matter?
I bet you can guess again that my answer is, “YES!” While there are several reasons, I’ll just cover one in this post/video.
And that is understanding voiced and unvoiced sound pairs. These are pairs of letters that are articulated the exact same way, EXCEPT one makes the vocal cords vibrate and one does not.
Here’s one example. /d/ and /t/. Both sounds are produced the same way in the mouth but /d/ makes the vocal cords vibrate while /t/ does not.
Here are some more voiced and unvoiced pairs. All the sounds in the first column are voiced while the matching pairs in the second column are unvoiced.
The last pair is an interesting one though. Most people make both sounds, /w/ and /hw/, voiced. Instead of /window/ and /hwale/, we typically make both of the initial sounds voiced: /window/ and /wale/.
Voiced and Unvoiced Sounds in Relation to Spellings
Where this understanding of voiced and unvoiced sound pairs comes into play would be when you look at the spellings of young children. They’re often not as random as you might think.
For example, if a child is writing in a group setting and they are whispering the sounds to themselves to figure out the spellings, more than likely, their vocal folds/cords won’t vibrate, even on the voiced sounds. It makes sense to see why frog could be spelled FROK.
Because /g/ and /k/ are a voice and unvoiced sound pair, when a child is whispering, their vocal folds will probably not be vibrating. Hence, /g/ will feel like /k/.
If a child was whispering the sounds in bird, why might it be spelled BIRT? Again, we have a voiced and unvoiced sound pair, which is /d/ and /t/. So, /d/ will sound like the unvoiced /t/ when it is whispered.
Be sure to download our updated Spelling Folder, with voiced and unvoiced sounds included!
Enjoy teaching!
~Becky
More Posts in this Series
The post Voiced and Unvoiced Sounds appeared first on This Reading Mama.