Handbook on Audio Cassette Course in Kashmiri - An Introduction ...

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A <strong>Handbook</strong> on Audio Cassette Course in Kashmiri
Consonants
Now that you have learnt the pronunciation of vowels, let us talk
about consonants. As told earlier there are 27 consonants in the Kashmiri
language. For teaching purpose these have been divided into 8
Programmes.
Before we introduce these Programmes let us tell you about the
general characteristics of consonant sounds.
While as vowels are pronounced by allowing the air stream to pass
through without any obstruction, consonants are pronounced when air is
made to stop somewhere in the oral cavity or allowed to pass through a
very narrow passage with friction.
The consonant phonemes are defined by distinctive features like place
of articulation, i.e. labial dental etc., mode of articulation like closure
friction retroflexion and modificatory features like voice aspiration, etc., all
consonants in Kashmiri occur at all places in a word.
Most of the consonants are similar to those of other languages like
Hindi or English, which you find easy to learn. However, there are some
peculiar ones like [ts] and [tsh] which require enough practice.
Kashmiri language does not have voiced aspirates as in Hindi like
[bh dh gh, jh.]. Let us now study consonants as are grouped together
based on their common features in the forthcoming Programmes.