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| Tenuis | |
|---|---|
| ◌˭ | |
| Encoding | |
| Entity(decimal) | ˭ |
| Unicode(hex) | U+02ED |
Inlinguistics, atenuis consonant (/ˈtɛn.juːɪs/ ⓘ or/ˈtɛnuːɪs/)[2] is anobstruent that isvoiceless,unaspirated andunglottalized.
In other words, it has the "plain"phonation of[p,t,ts,tʃ,k] with avoice onset time close to zero (a zero-VOT consonant), asSpanishp, t, ch, k orEnglishp, t, k afters (spy, sty, sky).
For most languages, the distinction is relevant only forstops andaffricates. However, a few languages have analogous series forfricatives.Mazahua, for example, has ejective, aspirated, and voiced fricatives/sʼsʰz/ alongside tenuis/s/, parallel to stops/ɗtʼtʰd/ alongside tenuis/t/.
Manyclick languages have tenuis click consonants alongside voiced, aspirated, and glottalized series.
In transcription, tenuis consonants are not normally marked explicitly, and consonants written with voicelessIPA letters, such as ⟨p,t,ts,tʃ,k⟩, are typically assumed to be unaspirated and unglottalized unless otherwise indicated. However, aspiration is often left untranscribed if no contrast needs to be made, like in English, so there is an explicit diacritic for a lack of aspiration in theextensions to the IPA, a superscript equal sign: ⟨p˭,t˭,ts˭,tʃ˭,k˭⟩. It is sometimes seen in phonetic descriptions of languages.[3] There are also languages, such as theNorthern Ryukyuan languages, whose phonologically-unmarked sound is aspirated, and the tenuis consonants are marked and transcribed explicitly.
InUnicode, the symbol is encoded atU+02ED ˭MODIFIER LETTER UNASPIRATED.
An early IPA convention was to write the tenuis stops ⟨pᵇ,tᵈ,kᶢ⟩ etc. if the plain letters ⟨p,t,k⟩ were used for aspirated consonants (as they are in English):[ˈpaɪ] 'pie' vs.[ˈspᵇaɪ] 'spy'.
The termtenuis comes from Latin translations ofAncient Greek grammar, which differentiated three series of consonants, voicedβ δ γ/bdɡ/, aspirateφ θ χ/pʰtʰkʰ/, and tenuisπ τ κ/p˭t˭k˭/. Analogous series occur in many other languages. The term was widely used in 19th-century philology but became uncommon in the 20th.