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The dental clicks are a family of click consonants found only in Africa and in the Damin ritual jargon of Australia.
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the forward articulation of these sounds is . This must be combined with a symbol for the rear articulation to represent an actual speech sound. Attested dental clicks include:
- or voiceless velar dental click (may also be aspirated, ejective, affricated, etc.)
- or voiced velar dental click (may also be breathy voiced, affricated, etc.)
- or nasal velar dental click (may also be voiceless, aspirated, etc.)
- or voiceless uvular dental click
- or voiceless uvular dental click (commonly prenasalized)
- or nasal uvular dental click
Features
Features of dental clicks:
- Their manner of articulation is click, which means they are produced with two articulatory closures in the oral cavity. The pocket of air trapped between the two closures is rarefied by a "sucking" action of the tongue. The release of the forward closure produces the 'click' sound. In the case of the dental clicks, the release is noisy, like an affricate, rather than sharp like a plosive. The rear closure may be a plosive, nasal, ejective, or affricate, and have any of several phonations.
- The forward place of articulation is dental or alveolar and laminal, which means it is articulated with the blade of the tongue on the alveolar ridge or the upper teeth. The rear place of articulation may be either velar or uvular.
- Dental clicks may be either oral or nasal, which means air is allowed to escape either through the mouth or the nose.
- They are central consonants, which means they are produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
- The airstream mechanism is velaric ingressive, which means it is produced by movement of air into the mouth by action of the tongue, rather than by the glottis or the lungs.
In English
English does not have the dental click (or any click consonants, for that matter) as a phoneme. However, there is an interjection, written tsk or tsk-tsk, used to express commiseration, disapproval, or irritation.
In other languages
The dental clicks are common in Khoisan languages and the neighboring Nguni languages (e.g. Zulu, Xhosa).
Xhosa and Zulu
In the Nguni languages, the tenuis click is denoted by the letter c, the murmured click by gc, the aspirated click by ch, and the nasal click by nc. The prenasalized clicks are written ngc and nkc.
Dahalo
The Cushitic language Dahalo has four clicks, all of them nasalized:
See also
"Dental click"