Dental consonants

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Dental
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Sound
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Places of articulation

Labial

Bilabial

Labial-velar

Labial-alveolar

Labiodental

Bidental

Coronal

Linguolabial

Interdental

Dental

Alveolar

Apical

Laminal

Postalveolar

Alveolo-palatal

Retroflex

Dorsal

Palatal

Labial-palatal

Velar

Uvular

Uvular-epiglottal

Radical

Pharyngeal

Epiglotto-pharyngeal

Epiglottal

Glottal

A dental consonant is a consonant articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as /t/, /d/, /n/, and /l/ in some languages. Dentals are primarily distinguished from sounds in which contact is made with the tongue and the gum ridge, as in English (see Alveolar consonant), due to the acoustic similarity of the sounds and the fact that in the Roman alphabet they are generally written using the same symbols (t, d, n, and so on).

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the diacritic for dental consonant is Template:IPA diacritic description

Dentals cross-linguistically

For many languages, such as Albanian, Irish or Russian, velarization is generally associated with more dental articulations of coronal consonants so that velarized consonants (such as Albanian /ɫ/) tend to be dental or denti-alveolar while non-velarized consonants tend to be retracted to an alveolar position.

Sanskrit, Hindi and all other Indic languages have an entire set of dental plosives which occur phonemically as voiced and voiceless, and with or without aspiration. The nasal stop /n/ also exists in these languages, but is quite alveolar and apical in articulation.^{[How to reference and link to summary or text]} To the Indian speaker, the alveolar /t/ and /d/ of English sound more like the corresponding retroflex consonants of his own language than like the dentals.^{[How to reference and link to summary or text]}

Spanish /t/ and /d/ are laminal denti-alveolar while /l/ and /n/ are prototypically alveolar but assimilate to the place 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.

Although denti-alveolar consonants are often described as dental, it is the rear-most point of contact that is most relevant, for this is what defines the maximum acoustic space of resonance and will give a consonant its characteristic sound. In the case of French, the rear-most contact is alveolar or sometimes slightly pre-alveolar.

Dental consonants in the world's languages

The dental/denti-alveolar consonants as transcribed by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

IPA	Description	Example
		Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
n + bridge below	dental nasal	Spanish	onda	[õn̪d̪a]	wave
t + bridge below	voiceless dental plosive	Spanish	toro	[t̪oɾo]	bull
d + bridge below	voiced dental plosive	Spanish	donde	[d̪õn̪d̪e]	where
s̪	voiceless dental sibilant fricative	Polish	kosa	[kɔs̪a]	scythe
z̪	voiced dental sibilant fricative	Polish	koza	[kɔz̪a]	goat
Greek small letter theta	voiceless dental nonsibilant fricative (also often called "interdental")	English	thing	[θɪŋ]	thing
Latin small letter eth	voiced dental nonsibilant fricative (also often called "interdental")	English	this	[ðɪs]	this
ð + down tack below	dental approximant	Spanish	codo	[koð̞o]	elbow
l + bridge below	dental lateral approximant	Spanish	alto	[al̪t̪o]	tall
ɾ + bridge below	dental flap	Spanish	pero	[peɾ̪o]	but
r + bridge below	dental trill	Marshallese	Ebadon	[ebˠɑr̪ˠon̪]	Ebadon
t + bridge below + modifier letter apostrophe	dental ejective
ɗ + bridge below	voiced dental implosive
Latin letter dental click	dental click release	Xhosa	ukúcola	[ukʼúkǀola]	to grind fine

See also

• Denti-alveolar consonant
• Place of articulation
• List of phonetics topics

Bibliography

• Ladefoged, Peter (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages, Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19814-8.
• Martínez-Celdrán, Eugenio; Fernández-Planas, Ana Ma.; Carrera-Sabaté, Josefina (2003), "Castilian Spanish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (2): 255–259, doi:10.1017/S0025100303001373 
• Recasens, Daniel; Espinosa, Aina (2005), "Articulatory, positional and coarticulatory characteristics for clear /l/ and dark /l/: evidence from two Catalan dialects", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 35 (1): 1–25, doi:10.1017/S0025100305001878 
• Rogers, Derek; d'Arcangeli, Luciana (2004), "Italian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34 (1): 117–121, doi:10.1017/S0025100304001628