A voiceless consonant is a type of consonant sound produced without vibrating the vocal cords. When pronouncing these sounds, the airflow is obstructed in the vocal tract, but the vocal cords remain open. Examples of voiceless consonants include p, t, k, s, and f. In contrast to voiceless consonants, voiced consonants involve vocal cord vibration. For instance, the b, d, g, z, and v sounds are voiced counterparts to the voiceless ones. Understanding the difference between these two categories is essential in phonetics and language learning.