Page 14 - ABCTE Study Guide_Neat

Consonant Blends

When a lady with a chocolate bar turns a corner and collides with a gentleman who is holding an
open container of peanut butter, the resultant confection is a blend. You will still see and taste the
chocolate, and you will still see and taste the peanut butter. Blending them together creates a
synergistic whole that is somehow greater than the sum of the parts. Nonetheless, you have not
taken away any of the properties that distinguish the chocolate from the peanut butter.

So it is with consonant blends. Two or three letters come together to form a phonemic blend, but the
sounds that distinguish one letter from the other remain. In the word stray, for instance, one can
discern the individual phonemes /s/, /t/, and /r/, yet they are blended together like chocolate, peanut
butter (and graham crackers.) An easy mnemonic goes like this: “Blend is a word that contains two
blends.”

flagrant

Take a look at the word above. Consonant blends (also called consonant clusters) may appear at the
beginning of a word, within the middle of a word, and/or at the end of a word. For instance, in the
word flagrant, there are three consonant blends: fl, in which one can clearly hear both constituents,
/f/ and /l/; gr, in which the /g/ and /r/ sounds are still distinguishable; and nt, which allows the voices
of both the /n/ and the /t/ to be heard.

Of course, not all unions of consonants permit the members to maintain their individuality. There are
some couples who surrender their individuality and produce a totally different sound altogether.
These, you may remember, are called digraphs. See below to review them:

Consonant Digraphs

As you recall from our discussion of consonant blends, there are times when multiple consonants
come together. When you can hear the phonemes associated with each consonant in such a union, it
is a consonant blend. When the union of letters creates an entirely new sound, however, you’re
looking at a consonant digraph.

For instance, the ph at the end of the word digraph contains neither the /p/ phoneme nor the /h/
phoneme. Rather, it represents the /f/ phoneme. Note, however, that the gr in the middle of the word
digraph contains both the /g/ phoneme and the /r/ phoneme, which makes that union a blend.

Other common digraphs include ch, as in charity; sh, as in shovel; wh, as in whistle; and th, as in
thistle or rather. The manner for writing the phonemes of the preceding digraphs is to contain the
entire digraph within the customary slashes, like this: /ch/, /sh/, and /wh/.
Since the th digraph can be read as two distinct phonemes, we need to be able to distinguish
one th from the other. There are at least two acceptable ways to do this:

• Create separate digraphic phoneme symbols, such as [th] for the sound in thistle and
[dh] for the sound in rather (note the use of brackets).
• Borrow symbols from the Greek alphabet, such as /q/ for the sound in thistle and /d/ for
the sound in rather.