Consonant Pair: /s/ and /z/

/s/ and /z/ are a consonant pair. The only difference between them is that you use your voice for /z/ but not for /s/. These letters often present problems for ESL learners because a word may be spelled with one letter, but make the other sound, such as the word Thursday, which is spelled with an “s” but makes a /z/ sound.

This pair of matched consonants is /s/ and /z/. /s/ is voiceless and /z/ is voiced. The sides of the tongue touch the insides of the teeth on the sides of the mouth. The sound is made when air is forced through the small gap between the teeth and the tongue. All right, here are some examples: sill, suit, safe, soup, size. And from this list: fasten, pricing, hasten, crisis, faces. And from this list: peace, pass, less, mouse, loss. Okay, let’s take a look at some words with /z/. Start over here is we always do: zeal, zinc, zoo, zebra, or zebra if you prefer – where I come from, we say zebra – zone. Here in the middle or medial position: easy, and this by the way, let’s just stop here, just for a minute. You notice that that is clearly an S and yet the sound a /z/. This happens a fair amount with matched consonants, where we will write one but say the other, especially when we will write the voiceless version and then we say the voiced version. So just be aware that it is quite common; it’s not a mistake. Another example: we say Thur/z/day even though we write Thur/s/day. Okay, so, you have to listen to the sound, not always look at the spelling. Alright, let’s start this list again: easy, noisy, wiser, dizzy, pauses. And over here: word-final position: does, haze, buzz, boys, wise. Alright, let’s see if you can pick up the difference. This first one – oh boy, if you’re not sure what this is you’re going to have to look this up. This is a mistake I hear all the time. In fact, this one… I’m not going to do our test right away, I’m going to explain this. This is pronounced miss, okay? And this is used for women who are unmarried. This is Ms and this is what is used most often in business contexts these days because this does not let let anybody know the marital status of the person you’re talking about, of the woman you’re talking about. Very often, I hear my students.. this is what’s written. and it’s often what they, what they write on their own paper, but this is what they end up saying. So again, clearly, or so again so you can hear them clearly, this one is Miss and this one is Ms. It does make a difference! All right, let’s start: Ms, joys, sauce, seal, close, devise, phase, scarce, sink, and use. Notice that with three words here the /s/ or /z/ is what makes the difference in terms of whether it’s one part of speech or another. So again, another reason to to make sure you’re getting this right. Okay, so there are the answers; that’s what I said. How did you do? If you’d like more practice, look below.