Voice (phonetics)

Voiced
◌̬
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	̬
Unicode (hex)	U+032C

Voiceless
◌̥
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	̥
Unicode (hex)	U+0325

Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterise speech sounds (usually consonants), with sounds described as either voiceless (also called unvoiced) or voiced.

The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts:

At the articulatory level, a voiced sound is one in which the vocal cords vibrate, and a voiceless sound is one in which they do not.

For example, voicing accounts for the difference between the pair of sounds associated with the English letters "s" and "z". The two sounds are transcribed as [s] and [z] to distinguish them from the English letters, which have several possible pronunciations, depending on the context. If one places the fingers on the voice box (i.e. the location of the Adam's apple in the upper throat), one can feel a vibration while zzzz is pronounced but not with ssss. (For a more detailed, technical explanation, see modal voice and phonation.) In most European languages, with a notable exception being Icelandic, vowels and other sonorants (consonants such as m, n, l, and r) are modally voiced.

When used to classify speech sounds, voiced and unvoiced are merely labels used to group phones and phonemes together for the purposes of classification.

The International Phonetic Alphabet has distinct letters for many voiceless and voiced pairs of consonants (the obstruents), such as [p b], [t d], [k ɡ], [q ɢ]. In addition, there is a diacritic for voicedness: ⟨◌̬⟩. Diacritics are typically used with letters for prototypically voiceless sounds.

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