Classification of consonants

The Greek alphabet has 17 symbols for consonants (in Greek σύμφωνα).

Consonants and their symbols are classified according to different criteria:

single or double, depending on whether a symbol designates a single consonantal sound or a combination of two different sounds;

simple consonants are divided into:

mutes or stops, their pronunciation is plosive, instantaneous, with no duration;

sonorant or continuant, whose sound can be prolonged.

The table below shows the Greek alphabet consonants and their classification:

Notice that:

• Mediae or voiced consonants are distinct from tenues or voiceless in that the pronunciation of the former is associated with vocal cord vibration, even though they are articulated with the same speech organs (lips, throat and teeth respectively);
• In ancient times, aspirated consonant pronunciation resulted from voiceless consonants followed by a burst of breath, here represented by the symbol H. Remember that designated aspiration in early alphabets, and it is such original value that was imported from the alphabets employed in Magna Grecia into the Latin alphabet. Evidence of how aspirates were pronounced is given by the transliteration of words imported into Latin. Just think of the word philosophia. Clearly, Greek φ must have sounded different from F to Roman ears. Apart from this, many epigraphic documents employing earlier alphabets explicitly represented aspirates by the corresponding voiceless followed by H;
• Greek has two distinct symbols for the velar nasal and the dental nasal respectively. In Italian, the same symbol designates both the n sound like in the word andare and the n sound like in ancóra, although they are pronounced differently: the former is pronounced with the tip of the tongue touching behind the upper front teeth, while the latter is pronounced with the back of the tongue touching the soft palate. Unlike Italian, the Greek language always represents velar nasals, i.e.: nasals preceding a velar consonant (κ, γ, χ, ξ), with the letter γ. In these cases, it will be important to read and pronounce γ as velar nasal. For this reason,