| Dental | |
|---|---|
| ◌̪ | |
| IPA number | 408 |
| Encoding | |
| Entity(decimal) | ̪ |
| Unicode(hex) | U+032A |
Adental consonant is aconsonantarticulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as/θ/,/ð/. In some languages, dentals are distinguished from other groups, such asalveolar consonants, in which thetongue contacts thegum ridge. Dental consonants share acoustic similarity and in theLatin script are generally written with consistent symbols (e.g.t,d,n).
In theInternational Phonetic Alphabet, the diacritic for dental consonant isU+032A ◌̪COMBINING BRIDGE BELOW. When there is no room under the letter, it may be placed above, using the characterU+0346 ◌͆COMBINING BRIDGE ABOVE, such as in /p͆/.
For many languages, such asAlbanian,Irish andRussian,velarization is generally associated with more dental articulations of coronal consonants. Thus, velarized consonants, such as Albanian/ɫ/, tend to be dental or denti-alveolar, and non-velarized consonants tend to be retracted to an alveolar position.[1]
Sanskrit,Hindustani and all otherIndo-Aryan languages have an entire set of dental stops that occur phonemically as voiced and voiceless and with or without aspiration. The nasal/n/ also exists but is quite alveolar andapical in articulation.[citation needed] To native speakers, theEnglish alveolar/t/ and/d/ sound more like the correspondingretroflex consonants of their languages than like dentals.[citation needed]
Spanish/t/ and/d/ aredenti-alveolar,[2] while/l/ and/n/ are prototypically alveolar but assimilate to theplace of articulation of a following consonant. Likewise,Italian/t/,/d/,/t͡s/,/d͡z/ are denti-alveolar ([t̪],[d̪],[t̪͡s̪], and[d̪͡z̪] respectively) and/l/ and/n/ become denti-alveolar before a following dental consonant.[3][4]
Although denti-alveolar consonants are often described as dental, it is the point of contact farthest to the back that is most relevant, defines the maximum acoustic space of resonance and gives a characteristic sound to a consonant.[5] InFrench, the contact that is farthest back is alveolar or sometimes slightly pre-alveolar.
Dental/denti-alveolar consonants as transcribed by theInternational Phonetic Alphabet include:
| IPA | Description | Example | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Language | Orthography | IPA | Meaning | ||
| n̪ | dental nasal | Russian | банк / bank | [ban̪k] | 'bank' |
| t̪ | voiceless dental plosive | Finnish | tutti | [t̪ut̪ːi] | 'pacifier' |
| d̪ | voiced dental plosive | Arabic | دين /din | [d̪iːn] | 'religion' |
| s̪ | voiceless dental sibilant fricative | Polish | kosa | [kɔs̪a] | 'scythe' |
| z̪ | voiced dental sibilant fricative | Polish | koza | [kɔz̪a] | 'goat' |
| θ | voiceless dental nonsibilant fricative (also often called "interdental") | English | thing | [θɪŋ] | |
| ð | voiced dental nonsibilant fricative (also often called "interdental") | English | this | [ðɪs] | |
| ð̞ | dental approximant | Spanish | codo | [koð̞o] | 'elbow' |
| l̪ | dental lateral approximant | Spanish | alto | [al̪t̪o] | 'tall' |
| t̪ʼ | dental ejective | Dahalo | [t̪ʼat̪t̪a] | 'hair' | |
| ɗ̪ | voiced dental implosive | Sindhi | ڏسڻي | [ɗ̪əsɪɳiː] | 'forefinger' |
| k͡ǀq͡ǀ ɡ͡ǀɢ͡ǀ ŋ͡ǀɴ͡ǀ | dental clicks (many different consonants) | Xhosa | ukúcola | [ukʼúkǀola] | 'to grind fine' |
