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In phonetics
Phonetics

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds , and the processes of their physiological production, auditory reception, and neurophysiological perception....
 and phonology
Phonology

Phonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system....
, a sonorant is a speech
Speech

Speech is the human faculty of speaking.It may also refer to:* Public speaking, the process of speaking to a group of people* Manner of articulation, how the body parts involved in making speech are manipulated...
 sound that is produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract
Vocal tract

The vocal tract is the cavity in animals where sound that is produced at the sound source is filtered. In birds it consists of the Vertebrate trachea, the Syrinx , the oral cavity, the upper part of the esophagus, and the beak....
. Essentially this means a sound that's "squeezed out" (like ) or "spat out" (like ) is not a sonorant. For example, vowel
Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis....
s are sonorants, as are consonants like and . Other consonants, like or , restrict the airflow enough to cause turbulence, and so are non-sonorant. In addition to vowels, phonetic categorizations of sounds that are considered sonorant include approximants, nasal consonant
Nasal consonant

A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered soft palate in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the tongue....
s, taps, and trills
Trill consonant

In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr > as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular trill....
.






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In phonetics
Phonetics

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds , and the processes of their physiological production, auditory reception, and neurophysiological perception....
 and phonology
Phonology

Phonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system....
, a sonorant is a speech
Speech

Speech is the human faculty of speaking.It may also refer to:* Public speaking, the process of speaking to a group of people* Manner of articulation, how the body parts involved in making speech are manipulated...
 sound that is produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract
Vocal tract

The vocal tract is the cavity in animals where sound that is produced at the sound source is filtered. In birds it consists of the Vertebrate trachea, the Syrinx , the oral cavity, the upper part of the esophagus, and the beak....
. Essentially this means a sound that's "squeezed out" (like ) or "spat out" (like ) is not a sonorant. For example, vowel
Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis....
s are sonorants, as are consonants like and . Other consonants, like or , restrict the airflow enough to cause turbulence, and so are non-sonorant. In addition to vowels, phonetic categorizations of sounds that are considered sonorant include approximants, nasal consonant
Nasal consonant

A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered soft palate in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the tongue....
s, taps, and trills
Trill consonant

In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr > as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular trill....
. In the sonority hierarchy
Sonority hierarchy

A sonority hierarchy or sonority scale is a ranking of speech communication sounds by amplitude. For example, if you say the vowel [a], you will produce much louder sound than if you say the Stop consonant [t]....
, all sounds higher than fricatives are sonorants. They can therefore form the nucleus
Syllable nucleus

In phonetics and phonology, the nucleus is the central part of the syllable, most commonly a vowel. In addition to a nucleus, a syllable may begin with an syllable onset and end with a syllable coda, but in most languages the only part of a syllable that is mandatory is the nucleus....
 of a syllable
Syllable

A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of Speech communication sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter....
 in languages that place that distinction at that level of sonority; see Syllable
Syllable

A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of Speech communication sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter....
 for details.

Sonorants are those articulations in which there is only a partial closure or an unimpeded oral or nasal scape of air; such articulations, typically voiced, and frequently frictionless, without noise component, may share many phonetic characteristics with vowels.

The word resonant is sometimes used for these non-turbulent sounds. In this case, the word sonorant may be restricted to non-vocoid resonants; that is, all of the above except vowels and semivowel
Semivowel

Semivowels, also known as glides or non-syllabic vowels, are vowels that form diphthongs with full syllable vowels. That is, they are vowel-like sounds that do not form the syllable nucleus of a syllable or mora ; they are not the most prominence part of the syllable....
s. However, this usage is becoming dated.

Sonorants contrast with obstruent
Obstruent

An obstruent is a consonant sound formed by obstructing airflow, causing increased air pressure in the vocal tract. In phonetics, Manner of articulation may be divided into two large classes, obstruents and sonorants....
s, which do cause turbulence in the vocal tract. Among consonants pronounced far back in the throat (uvulars
Uvular consonant

Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the Palatine uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants....
, pharyngeals
Pharyngeal consonant

A pharyngeal consonant is a type of consonant which is articulated with the root of the tongue against the pharynx.Pharyngeal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet :...
) the distinction between an approximant and a voiced fricative is so blurred that such sounds as voiced uvular fricative
Voiced uvular fricative

The voiced uvular fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is R....
  and voiced pharyngeal fricative
Voiced pharyngeal fricative

The voiced pharyngeal approximant/fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents it is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ?....
  often behave like sonorants. The pharyngeal consonant is also a semivowel corresponding to the vowel .

Whereas most obstruents are voiceless
Voiceless

In linguistics, the term voiceless describes the pronunciation of sounds when the larynx does not vibrate. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of phonation....
, the great majority of sonorants are voiced. It is certainly possible to make voiceless sonorants, but sonorants that are unvoiced occur in only about 5 percent of the world's languages. These are almost exclusively found in the area around the Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. Its name is derived from the Latin name Mare Pacificum, "peaceful sea", bestowed upon it by the Portugal explorer Ferdinand Magellan....
 from New Caledonia
New Caledonia

New Caledonia , is a "sui generis collectivity" of France located in the subregion of Melanesia in the Oceania. It comprises a main island , the Loyalty Islands, and several smaller islands....
 clockwise
Clockwise

A clockwise motion is one that proceeds 'like the clock's hands': from the top to the right, then down and then to the left, and back to the top....
 to South America
South America

South America is the southern continent of the Americas, situated entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere....
 and belong to a number of language families, among them Austronesian
Austronesian languages

The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Maritime Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia....
, Sino-Tibetan
Sino-Tibetan languages

The Sino-Tibetan languages form a language family composed of, at least, the Chinese language and the Tibeto-Burman languages, including some 250 languages of East Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of South Asia....
, Na-Dene
Na-Dené languages

Na-Dene is a Indigenous peoples of the Americas language family which includes at least the Athabaskan languages, Eyak, and Tlingit language languages....
 and Eskimo-Aleut
Eskimo-Aleut languages

Eskimo-Aleut is a language family native to Alaska, the Northern Canada, Nunavik, Nunatsiavut, Greenland, and the Chukchi Peninsula on the eastern tip of Siberia....
. It is notable that, in every case where a voiceless sonorant does occur, there is a contrasting voiced sonorant.

Voiceless sonorants tend to be extremely quiet and very difficult to recognise even for those people whose language does contain them. They have a strong tendency to either revoice or undergo fortition
Fortition

Fortition is a consonantal change from a 'weak' sound to a 'strong' one, the opposite of the more common lenition. For example, a fricative or an approximant may become a plosive ....
 to form for example a fricative like or .

Sonorants in English

English has the following sonorant consonantal phonemes: .