These places of articulation are cross referenced with the way, or manner in which the sounds are produced. There are eight manners of articulation: plosive (or stop) consonants in which the air-flow is stopped abruptly by the articulators; nasals, in which the air flows down the nose; fricatives in which friction is created by the air passing through lightly touching articulators; and so on. 

The chart also indicates which consonants are voiced (like b, d, g, v, z, etc.) and which are voiceless (like p, t, k, f, s, etc.). Where you see pairs of sounds (or voiced and voiceless cognates) the voiceless sound is on the left, and the voiced one on the right. When a voiced sound is produced the vocal cords in the larynx (voice box) vibrate. When a voiceless sound is produced the vocal cords do not vibrate. 

All the consonants of English can be classified in terms of "VPM" (voice-place-manner). For instance, /f/ is a voiceless labiodental fricative, and /b/ is a voiced bilabial plosive (stop). 

Click here for the 2005 version of the full chart

The International Phonetic Alphabet may be freely copied on condition that acknowledgement is made to the International Phonetic Association (Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki 54124, GREECE).

Page updated 05 Feb 2010

http://www.speech-language-therapy.com/vpm.htm