Resonant articulations

If articulators are held so as not to generate friction, but to allow air to pass between them smoothly, then we get articulations known as resonant. The degree of stricture is known as open approximation, and consonant sounds generated this way are called approximants. Vowels are another kind of resonant articulation.

Approximants in English include the sounds [j w l r]. (Note: [j] stands for the sound usually writtenin English, as in ‘yes’. The phonetic symbol [y] stands for a vowel.) [j w] are often called glides, because they are closely related in phonetic terms to the vowels [i] and [u], and can be thought of as non-syllabic versions of these vowels. [l r] are often called liquids, and they have certain similarities in the places where they occur in consonant clusters. We will use the symbol [r] for now to represent any kind of [r]-sound, though for the majority of English varieties, a more accurate symbol would be [ɹ].

The English approximants [w j r] are central and [l] is lateral. Approximants are among the phonetically most complex of sounds in English because they typically involve more than one articulation; so we shall leave further discussion of English approximants.