Alveolar (; UK also ) consonants are

articulated An articulated vehicle is a vehicle which has a permanent or semi-permanent pivot joint in its construction, allowing it to turn more sharply. There are many kinds, from heavy equipment to buses, trams and trains. Steam locomotives were some ...

with the tongue against or close to the superior

alveolar ridge The alveolar process () or alveolar bone is the thickened ridge of bone that contains the tooth sockets on the jaw bones (in humans, the maxilla and the mandible). The structures are covered by gums as part of the oral cavity. The synonymous ...

, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the upper teeth. Alveolar consonants may be articulated with the tip of the tongue (the apical consonants), as in English, or with the flat of the tongue just above the tip (the "blade" of the tongue; called

laminal consonant A laminal consonant is a phone (speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue in contact with upper lip, teeth, alveolar ridge, to possibly, as ...

s), as in French and Spanish. 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 o ...

(IPA) does not have separate symbols for the alveolar consonants. Rather, the same symbol is used for all coronal places of articulation that are not palatalized like English palato-alveolar ''sh'', or

retroflex A retroflex ( /ˈɹɛtʃɹoːflɛks/), apico-domal ( /əpɪkoːˈdɔmɪnəl/), or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the har ...

. To disambiguate, the ''bridge'' (, ''etc.'') may be used for a dental consonant, or the under-bar (, ''etc.'') may be used for the postalveolars. differs from dental in that the former is a

sibilant Sibilants are fricative consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words ''sip'', ''zip'', ''ship'', and ...

and the latter is not. differs from postalveolar in being unpalatalized. The bare letters , etc. cannot be assumed to specifically represent alveolars. The language may not make such distinctions, such that two or more coronal places of articulation are found allophonically, or the transcription may simply be too broad to distinguish dental from alveolar. If it is necessary to specify a consonant as alveolar, a diacritic from the Extended IPA may be used: , ''etc.'', though that could also mean extra-retracted. The letters are frequently called 'alveolar', and the language examples below are all alveolar sounds. (The Extended IPA diacritic was devised for

speech pathology Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if they are th ...

and is frequently used to mean "alveolarized", as in the labioalveolar sounds , where the lower lip contacts the alveolar ridge.)

In IPA

Alveolar consonants are transcribed in the IPA as follows:

Lack of alveolars

The alveolar or dental consonants and are, along with , the most common consonants in human languages.Ian Maddieson and Sandra Ferrari Disner, 1984, ''Patterns of Sounds.'' Cambridge University Press Nonetheless, there are a few languages that lack them. A few languages on

Bougainville Island Bougainville Island ( Tok Pisin: ''Bogenvil'') is the main island of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, which is part of Papua New Guinea. It was previously the main landmass in the German Empire-associated North Solomons. Its land area ...

and around Puget Sound, such as

Makah The Makah (; Klallam: ''màq̓áʔa'')Renker, Ann M., and Gunther, Erna (1990). "Makah". In "Northwest Coast", ed. Wayne Suttles. Vol. 7 of ''Handbook of North American Indians'', ed. William C. Sturtevant. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institu ...

, lack nasals and therefore , but have . Colloquial Samoan, however, lacks both and , but it has a

lateral alveolar approximant The voiced alveolar lateral approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral approximants is , and the e ...

. (Samoan words written with ''t'' and ''n'' are pronounced with and in colloquial speech.) In Standard Hawaiian, is an allophone of , but and exist.

consonants

In labioalveolars, the lower lip contacts the alveolar ridge. Such sounds are typically the result of a severe overbite. In the

Extensions to the IPA The Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for Disordered Speech, commonly abbreviated extIPA , are a set of letters and diacritics devised by the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association to augment the Internati ...

for disordered speech, they are transcribed with the alveolar diacritic on labial letters: .

Notes

References

* {{IPA navigation Place of articulation *

In IPA

Lack of alveolars

consonants

See also

Notes

References