Topic-099: Voicing and Consonants Voicing is an important feature of speech sounds which is used not only as a feature but also as a distinction for describing sounds. There are sounds (such as vowels, nasals and approximants i.e., sonorants) which are usually voiced (though in particular contexts the voicing maybe weak or absent. On the other hand, there are sounds which maybe voiced or voiceless such as fricatives and plosives together called obstruents). Obstruents are the most frequently found sounds that have both voicing and voicelessness. Remember that voiced and voiceless can make a phonemic distinction (in languages such as English) thus the meaning of a word can change if one uses a voiceless sound instead of a voiced sound. A glottal stop is only an allophonic variation and is used in RP before pt, k. In some dialects these three can even be replaced by a glottal stop altogether. The symbol fora glottal stop is like a question mark [ ʔ].
