The voiceless or more precisely tenuis (post)alveolar click is a

click consonant Click consonants, or clicks, are speech sounds that occur as consonants in many languages of Southern Africa and in three languages of East Africa. Examples familiar to English-speakers are the '' tut-tut'' (British spelling) or '' tsk! tsk!' ...

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 standard written representation ...

for a tenuis alveolar click with a velar rear articulation is or , commonly abbreviated to , or simply ; a symbol abandoned by the IPA but still preferred by some linguists is or , abbreviated , or just . For a click with a uvular rear articulation, the equivalents are and . Sometimes the accompanying letter comes after the click letter, e.g. or ; this may be a simple orthographic choice, or it may imply a difference in the relative timing of the releases.

Features

Features of the tenuis (post)alveolar click:

Occurrence

Tenuis alveolar clicks are found primarily in the various

Khoisan Khoisan ( ) or () is an Hypernymy and hyponymy, umbrella term for the various Indigenous peoples of Africa, indigenous peoples of Southern Africa who traditionally speak non-Bantu languages, combining the Khoekhoen and the San people, Sān peo ...

language families of southern Africa and in some neighboring

Bantu languages The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu language, Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀), or Ntu languages are a language family of about 600 languages of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern, East Africa, Eastern and Southeast Africa, South ...

References

{{IPA navigation Click consonants Oral consonants Central consonants Tenuis consonants