The dental nasal click is a
click consonant found primarily among the languages of southern Africa. The symbol in the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
that represents this sound is or ; a symbol abandoned by the IPA but still preferred by some linguists is or .
Features
Features of the dental nasal click:
Occurrence
Dental nasal clicks are found primarily in the various
Khoisan language families of southern Africa and in some neighboring
Bantu languages, such as
Yeyi Yeyi may refer to:
*Ye County, Henan, China, formerly known as Yeyi
* Yeyi people
*Yeyi language
Yeyi (autoethnonym ''Shiyɛyi'') is a Bantu languages, Bantu language spoken by many of the approximately 50,000 Yeyi people along the Okavango Rive ...
and
Fwe.
Glottalized dental nasal click
All
Khoisan languages, and a few Bantu languages, have glottalized nasal clicks. These are formed by closing the
glottis so that the click is pronounced in silence; however, any preceding vowel will be nasalized.
References
{{IPA navigation
Nasal consonants
Click consonants
Central consonants
Voiced consonants