Voiced alveolar and dental plosives (or stops) are a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. The alveolar is familiar to English-speakers as the sound in adore.
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiced dental, alveolar and postalveolar plosives is ; the diacritic in can be used to distinguish the dental.
There are only a few languages that distinguish dental and alveolar stops (or often more precisely laminal and apical alveolar stops), among them Kota, Toda, Venda and some Irish dialects.
Features
Features of a voiced alveolar stop:
There are three specific variants of : Dental, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue at the upper teeth, termed respectively apical and laminal. Denti-alveolar, which means it is articulated with the blade of the tongue at the alveolar ridge, and the tip of the tongue behind upper teeth. Alveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue at the alveolar ridge, termed respectively apical and laminal.
Occurrence
Dental or denti-alveolar Language Word IPA Meaning Notes Albanian 'door' Arabic Egyptian / 'world' See Egyptian Arabic phonology Armenian Eastern / 'face' Laminal denti-alveolar. Western / 'to give' Laminal denti-alveolar. Bashkir / 'four' Basque 'money' Laminal denti-alveolar. Belarusian / 'travel' Laminal denti-alveolar. See Belarusian phonology Bengali / 'milk' Laminal denti-alveolar. Contrasts aspirated and unaspirated forms. See Bengali phonology Catalan 'dragon' Laminal denti-alveolar. See Catalan phonology Dinka 'distinct' Laminal denti-alveolar. Contrasts with alveolar . Dhivehi / 'sad' Laminal denti-alveolar. Dutch Belgian 'thing' Laminal denti-alveolar. English Dublin then 'then' Laminal denti-alveolar. Corresponds to in other dialects. In Dublin it may be . See English phonology Southern Irish Geordie Word-initial allophone of ; may be realized as instead.Indian Ulster dream 'dream' Allophone of before , in free variation with an alveolar stop. Esperanto 'world' See Esperanto phonology. French 'canopy'Laminal denti-alveolar. See French phonology Georgian 'tail'Laminal denti-alveolar. See Georgian phonology Hindustani Hindi / 'milk' Laminal denti-alveolar. Hindustani contrasts aspirated and unaspirated forms. Contrasts with aspirated form <ध>. See Hindi-Urdu phonology Urdu / Contrasts with aspirated form <دھ>.Hungarian'tax'See Hungarian phonology Irish 'dark' Laminal denti-alveolar. See Irish phonology Italian 'to give'Laminal denti-alveolar. See Italian phonology Japanese / 'masculine' Laminal denti-alveolar. See Japanese phonology Kashubian Laminal denti-alveolar. Kazakh 'friend' Laminal denti-alveolar. Kyrgyz 'friend' Laminal denti-alveolar. Latvian 'fever' Laminal denti-alveolar. See Latvian phonologyMalayalamദിവസം/divasam'day'See Malayalam phonology Marathi / 'stone'Laminal denti-alveolar. Marathi contrasts aspirated and unaspirated forms. See Marathi phonology MinangkabauPadang 'near' Laminal denti-alveolar. Nepali / 'daytime'Contrasts with aspirated form. See Nepali Phonology Odia / 'ten'Laminal denti-alveolar. Contrasts aspirated and unaspirated forms. Pashto / 'two'Laminal denti-alveolar. Polish 'home'Laminal denti-alveolar. See Polish phonology Portuguese Many dialects 'to give' Laminal denti-alveolar. May palatalize or lenite in certain environments, depending on dialect. See Portuguese phonology PunjabiGurmukhiਦਾਲ/dāl'lentils' Laminal denti-alveolar.Shahmukhi/dāl Russian / 'two' Laminal denti-alveolar, contrasts with a palatalized alveolar variant. See Russian phonology Scottish Gaelic Uist and Barra 'following' Allophone of after nasals. See Scottish Gaelic phonology Serbo-Croatian / 'rainbow' Laminal denti-alveolar. See Serbo-Croatian phonologySinhala'day' Slovene 'today' Laminal denti-alveolar. See Slovene phonology Spanish 'sunken'Laminal denti-alveolar. See Spanish phonology Telugu 'Kindness'Laminal denti-alveolar. Contrasts aspirated and unaspirated forms. Aspirated form articulated as breathy consonant. Turkish 'twig'Laminal denti-alveolar. See Turkish phonology Ukrainian / 'tree' Laminal denti-alveolar. See Ukrainian phonology Uzbek [siɸætidæ] 'as'Laminal denti-alveolar.Wu/'the Tang dynasty' Zapotec Tilquiapan dan 'countryside'Laminal denti-alveolar.
Alveolar Language Word IPA Meaning Notes Adyghe /daahė 'pretty' Assyrian ܘܪܕܐ ] 'flower' Predominant in the Urmia, Jilu, Baz, Gawar and Nochiya dialects. Corresponds to in other varieties. Bengali ডাব/ḍab 'green coconut' True alveolar in some eastern dialects. But all Bengali speakers allophone of after and before denti-alveolar or postalveolar . See Bengali phonologyBreton'back' Catalan 'said before' Laminal alveolar. See Catalan phonology Czech 'into' See Czech phonology Dutch 'roof' See Dutch phonology English Most speakers dash 'dash' See English phonology Finnish 'bond' See Finnish phonology Greek 'shame' See Modern Greek phonology Hebrew / do'ar 'mail' See Modern Hebrew phonology Hmong White Hmong / 'water' In Green Hmong, it'll be / Hungarian 'onto the moon' Allophone of [d̪] before [r] or [ɾ]. See Hungarian phonology Kabardian / daahė 'pretty' Khmer / 'bottle' Korean / adeul 'son'See Korean phonologyKurdishNorthern'tooth'See Kurdish phonologyCentral/ dadânSouthern/dîân Luxembourgish 'brother' More often voiceless . See Luxembourgish phonology MalayStandard (incl. Malaysian) 'branch'See Malay phonologyIndonesianKelantan-Pattani[dahɛː]See Kelantan-Pattani MalayMalayalamഎന്റെ/ente'my' or 'mine'See Malayalam phonology Maltese 'wit' Tagalog 'maiden' See Tagalog phonology Thai / dāw 'star' Welshdiafol[djavɔl]'devil'See Welsh phonology West Frisian 'village' Yi / 'competent' Yonaguni / dunan 'Yonaguni'
Postalveolar
To distinguish from the voiced dental and alveolar plosives, a voiced postalveolar plosive can be transcribed as . A more explicit (though convoluted) transcription , using a combination of extIPA and obsolete diacritics, can also be used.
Language Word IPA Meaning Notes Bengali 'robber' Apical postalveolar; contrasts aspirated forms. See Bengali phonology Hindustani / 'to put' Contrasts unaspirated and aspirated forms. See Hindustani phonology Nepali 'fear' See Nepali phonology Odia /ḍaṅgā 'boat' Contrasts unaspirated and aspirated forms.
Variable Language Word IPA Meaning Notes Arabic /dīn 'religion' Laminal denti-alveolar or alveolar, depending on the dialect. See Arabic phonology. English Broad South African dawn 'dawn' Laminal denti-alveolar for some speakers, alveolar for other speakers. Scottish Welsh German Standard 'or' Varies between laminal denti-alveolar, laminal alveolar and apical alveolar. See Standard German phonology Norwegian Urban East 'dance' Partially voiced or fully voiceless . Varies between laminal denti-alveolar and laminal alveolar. See Norwegian phonology Persian /edâre 'office' Varies between laminal denti-alveolar and apical alveolar. See Persian phonology Slovak 'into' Varies between laminal denti-alveolar and laminal alveolar. See Slovak phonology Swedish Central Standard 'day' Varies between laminal denti-alveolar and alveolar, with the former being predominant. May be an approximant in casual speech. See Swedish phonology
See also Index of phonetics articles
Notes
References
External links