Voiced Consonants

Voiced consonants are consonants that cause a vibration of the vocal cords. You can feel this vibration when you place your hand on your throat.

The voiced consonants in English are:
/b/, /d/, /g/, /dʒ/, /l/, /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /ʒ/, /v/, /r/,/ð/, /w/, /z/

Two voiced consonants that students have problems with are /l/ & /r/.

/l/ & /r/

Remember, as we have talked in class, your tongue is flat and touching your upper teeth for /l/.
For /r/ your tongue is curved and not touching the roof of your mouth. There's a good drawing of these two different sounds on Learn English Free Online here.

If you find /l/ and /r/ challenging to do correctly, check out this video. This is a clip from a popular TV show called Glee. As he sings the song Hello, you can really see how he places his tongue for /l/ and you can see how round his lips are for /r/. As you can't see his tongue for the r, you can understand the placement is different. (Pay attention to how he sings hello, alone, and door.)