This chapter examines consonants in Slavic languages primarily from a synchronic perspective. I begin by reviewing the consonant inventories. Key properties of the inventories are secondary palatalization, a large inventory of coronal fricatives and affricates, and a voicing contrast in obstruents. The remainder of the chapter reviews four types of consonant patterns: palatalization, voicing, other local alternations, and long-distance alternations. Palatalization is inherited from Proto-Slavic, but the contemporary languages differ in terms of segments undergoing it, morphological triggers, and phonological conditioning. Slavic voicing alternations offer typological insight into the extent of cross-linguistic variation. The key differences are in final devoicing, directionality, and participation of sonorants. Slavic languages also exhibit limited place assimilation, dissimilation, and consonant decomposition. As for long-distance patterns, I review both assimilatory (sibilant consonant harmony) and dissimilatory (consonant co-occurrence restrictions) phenomena in two Slavic languages.

Following our discussion of English vowels in Chapter 3 and rhoticity in Chapter 4, this chapter introduces you to English consonants, as well as variation in consonant inventories across varieties of English. We begin the chapter with a discussion of the characteristics of consonants, focusing on the classification of consonant sounds by place of articulation, manner of articulation, and voicing. This overview also examines consonant inventories cross-linguistically, to help you understand which consonants – and consonant features – are the most common across languages, and why.

The next two sections of the chapter provide an overview of English consonants by introducing the consonant phonemes common to many varieties of English, with variation in these inventories discussed as relevant. A brief overview of modern-day spelling of English consonants is also given. Consonant variation within varieties of English and phonological rules that govern this variation are then discussed. In the final section of the chapter, you will be guided through exercises designed to check your understanding of the content of the chapter and an analysis of your own English consonant inventory.

Chapter 2 discusses some of the most salient and yet persistently controversial and significant phenomena in Korean phonology: lenis obstruent voicing, stop neutralization, consonant cluster simplification, consonant assimilation, consonantal fortition, Saisiot, vowel deletion and insertion, vowel devoicing and assimilation, monophthongization, vowel harmony, and sound symbolism. The chapter focuses on the Seoul Standard Dialect. One salient and recurrent theme is the theoretical issue of the relative strength of each sound, both inherent and in its environment. Some sounds are held to be “stronger” than others; we see that these sounds are exploited not only in sound symbolism but also in the application or non-application of certain rules. Boundaries play a significant role in Korean phonology and are analyzed as prosodic units in contemporary analyses. The Korean-specific basis of articulation, particularly obligatory unreleasing, results in many interesting weakening effects, including consonant cluster simplification, various assimilatory phenomena, and various consonant and vowel insertions by backward generalizations.