Voiceless dental and alveolar plosives

Voiceless alveolar and dental plosives (or stops) are sounds used in almost all spoken languages. The alveolar sound is familiar to English-speakers as the "t" sound in the word "stick".

The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents these sounds is ⟨t⟩. Special marks can show the exact place of the sound, like ⟨t̪⟩ for the dental sound and ⟨t̠⟩ for the postalveolar sound.

The [t] sound is very common across languages. Most languages have at least one kind of [t] sound, and some have more than one kind. A few languages, like colloquial Samoan, Abau, and Nǁng of South Africa, do not use the [t] sound at all.

Only a few languages can tell the difference between dental and alveolar stops, including Kota, Toda, Venda, and many Australian Aboriginal languages. Some types of Hiberno-English also make this difference.

Features

Voiceless alveolar stops are sounds made by blocking airflow in the mouth. These sounds are created without vibrations of the vocal cords, so they are quiet sounds.

There are three ways to make this sound:

• Dental: using the tip or blade of the tongue near the upper teeth
• Denti-alveolar: using the blade of the tongue near the ridge behind the teeth, with the tip behind the upper teeth
• Alveolar: using the tip or blade of the tongue near the ridge behind the teeth

These sounds are made by pushing air only from the chest and belly, not through the nose, and the air flows down the middle of the tongue.

Occurrence

Voiceless dental and alveolar plosives are sounds used in many languages around the world. These sounds are like the "t" sound in the word "stick" in English.