The Following Excerpt Is Consonant
The answer to the title is that a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Consonants are usually distinguished from vowels, which are speech sounds that are articulated with a formant or modulated sound. Consonants are most commonly found in languages that have a phonemic system, such as English, Spanish, and Arabic.
In English, consonants are articulated with either hard or soft articulations. Hard consonants are articulated with complete closure of the vocal tract and usually involve a stop or a fricative sound. Soft consonants are articulated with partial closure of the vocal tract and often involve nasals, liquids, or glides.
Inherent vowels are vowels that are always present in a word, regardless of whether a consonant follows them. Inherent vowels are typically long and open, such as the “a” in the English word “past”.
In some languages, consonants can be linked with vowels to form a single unit, called a diphthong. In these languages, a diphthong often displays a range of articulations and pitch changes.
In HTML, some languages allow for control of consonants and inherent vowels with properties set on the root element, such as “bidibreak=soft” and “lang=he”. These properties help define the way in which consonants and inherent vowels will be presented in HTML documents.
This article has provided an overview of consonants and inherent vowels. We have discussed the difference between hard and soft consonants, as well as the concept of inherent vowels, and have also discussed the HTML elements available to control the presentation of consonants and inherent vowels.