Voiced and Unvoiced - Answers!

Our first Phonics Investigation Challenge has come to an end.  Time for answers and shout-outs!

Here were the three challenge questions:

1. When you read, keep an eye out for the "th" sounds.  Which one do you hear more often - the voiced or the unvoiced "th"?
2. There are several other pairs of sounds just like this: your mouth, lips, teeth and tongue stay in the same position and only the presence or absence of the "buzzing" of the vocal chords makes the difference between sounds.  Some of these pairs can be found among the basic sounds of letters of the alphabet, so start there.  But there are some more complicated versions as well!
3. As you experiment with the sounds of the letters of the alphabet, you may notice that there is one type of letter that is always voiced.  Can you discover what that category might be?

Answers:

1. This answer may vary depending on what you were reading.  The unvoiced "th" occurs in more English words, but the words which use a voiced "th" (like "the", "this", "that", "these" and "those") appear much more frequently in English!
2. Here are some other pairs of voiced and unvoiced sounds.
   /b/ like the b in book and /p/ like the p in pet
   /g/ like the g in gum and /k/ like the k in king or the c in cat
   /d/  like the d in dog and /t/ like the t in ten
   /j/ like the j in jump and /ch/ like the ch in church
   /v/ like the v in van and /f/ like the f in fun
   /z/ like the z in zoo and /s/ like the s in sip or the c in city
   /zh/ like the g in genre or the si in vision and /sh/ like the sh in ship or the ti nation
3. While consonants and consonant "team" sounds can be voiced or unvoiced, vowels (all of the different sounds that they each make) are always voiced!

Congratulations to Doug W. for answering the third part of the challenge correctly!

If you are on Periscope, you can catch our next Challenge live tomorrow afternoon (details at the bottom of this page)!  If not, be sure to check the website tomorrow evening and I'll put a link to the Scope on Katch.  Happy Investigating!