The alveolar 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 alveolar nasal click:

Occurrence

Alveolar nasal clicks are found primarily in the various Khoisan language families of southern Africa and in some neighboring Bantu languages such as Yeyi.

Glottalized alveolar nasal click

All

Khoisan languages The Khoisan languages (; also Khoesan or Khoesaan) are a group of African languages originally classified together by Joseph Greenberg. Khoisan languages share click consonants and do not belong to other African language families. For much of ...

, 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