Dental (or more precisely denti-alveolar) clicks are a family of

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!' ...

s found, as constituents of words, only in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

and in the Damin ritual jargon of

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

. In English, the ''tut-tut!'' (British spelling, "tutting") or ''tsk! tsk!'' (American spelling, "tsking") sound used to express disapproval or pity is an unreleased dental click, although it is not a lexical

phoneme A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...

(a sound that distinguishes words) in English but a paralinguistic speech-sound. Similarly paralinguistic usage of dental clicks is made in certain other languages, but the meaning thereof differs widely between many of the languages (e.g., affirmation in Somali but negation in many

varieties of Arabic Varieties of Arabic (or dialects or vernaculars) are the linguistic systems that Arabic speakers speak natively. Arabic is a Semitic languages, Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic family that originated in the Arabian P ...

, Turkish and the languages of the Balkans). 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 ...

that represents the

place of articulation In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is an approximate location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a pa ...

of these sounds is , a

vertical bar The vertical bar, , is a glyph with various uses in mathematics, computing, and typography. It has many names, often related to particular meanings: Sheffer stroke (in logic), pipe, bar, or (literally, the word "or"), vbar, and others. Usage ...

. Prior to 1989, was the IPA letter for the dental clicks. It is still occasionally used where the symbol would be confounded with other symbols, such as prosody marks, or simply because in many fonts the vertical bar is indistinguishable from a lowercase L or capital I. Either letter may be combined with a second letter to indicate the

manner of articulation articulatory phonetics, the manner of articulation is the configuration and interaction of the articulators ( speech organs such as the tongue, lips, and palate) when making a speech sound. One parameter of manner is ''stricture,'' that is, h ...

, though this is commonly omitted for tenuis clicks.

Dental click consonants and their transcription

In official IPA transcription, the click letter is combined with a via a tie bar, though is frequently omitted. Many authors instead use a superscript without the tie bar, again often neglecting the . Either letter, whether baseline or superscript, is usually placed before the click letter, but may come after when the release of the velar or uvular occlusion is audible. A third convention is the click letter with diacritics for voicelessness, voicing and nasalization; this does not distinguish velar from uvular dental clicks. Common dental clicks in these three transcriptions are: The last is what is heard in the sound sample at right, as non-native speakers tend to glottalize clicks to avoid nasalizing them. In the orthographies of individual languages, the letters and digraphs for dental clicks may be based on either the vertical bar symbol of the IPA, , or on the Latin of Bantu convention. Nama and most Bushman languages use the former;

Naro Naro ( ) is a ''comune'' in the province of Agrigento, on the island of Sicily, Italy. It is bounded by the comuni of Agrigento, Caltanissetta, Camastra, Campobello di Licata, Canicattì, Castrofilippo, Delia, Favara, Licata, Palma di ...

, Sandawe, and Zulu use the latter.

Features

Features of dental clicks: *The forward

is typically dental (or denti-alveolar) and

laminal 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, ...

, which means it is articulated with the tip of the tongue against the

alveolar ridge The alveolar process () is the portion of bone containing the tooth sockets on the jaw bones (in humans, the maxilla and the mandible). The alveolar process is covered by gums within the mouth, terminating roughly along the line of the mandib ...

or the upper

teeth A tooth (: teeth) is a hard, calcified structure found in the jaws (or mouths) of many vertebrates and used to break down food. Some animals, particularly carnivores and omnivores, also use teeth to help with capturing or wounding prey, tear ...

, but depending on the language may be interdental or even apical. The release is a noisy,

affricate An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pai ...

-like sound.

Occurrence

Dental clicks are common in

Khoisan languages The Khoisan languages ( ; also Khoesan or Khoesaan) are a number of Languages of Africa, African languages once classified together, originally by Joseph Greenberg. Khoisan is defined as those languages that have click languages, click consonant ...

and the neighboring Nguni languages, such as Zulu and Xhosa. In the Nguni languages, the tenuis click is denoted by the letter ''c'', the murmured click by ''gc'', the aspirated click by ''ch'', and the nasal click by ''nc''. The prenasalized clicks are written ''ngc'' and ''nkc''. The Cushitic language Dahalo has four clicks, all of them nasalized: . Dental clicks may also be used para-linguistically. For example, English speakers use a plain dental click, usually written ''tsk'' or ''tut'' (and often reduplicated ''tsk-tsk'' or ''tut-tut''; these spellings often lead to

spelling pronunciation A spelling pronunciation is the pronunciation of a word according to its spelling when this differs from a longstanding standard or traditional pronunciation. Words that are spelled with letters that were never pronounced or that were not pronoun ...

s or ), as an

interjection An interjection is a word or expression that occurs as an utterance on its own and expresses a spontaneous feeling, situation or reaction. It is a diverse category, with many different types, such as exclamations ''(ouch!'', ''wow!''), curses (''da ...

to express commiseration, disapproval, irritation, or to call a small animal. German ( or ), Hungarian (), Persian (), Portuguese (), Russian ( ; sound file) Spanish () and French () speakers use the dental click in a similar way as English. The dental click is also used para-linguistically in

Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya language, Tigrinya, Aramaic, Hebrew language, Hebrew, Maltese language, Maltese, Modern South Arabian language ...

such as

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

and Indo-European

Pashto Pashto ( , ; , ) is an eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family, natively spoken in northwestern Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan. It has official status in Afghanistan and the Pakistani province of Khyb ...

, and Persian where it is transcribed as / and is also used as a negative response to a "yes or no" question (including

Dari Dari (; endonym: ), Dari Persian (, , or , ), or Eastern Persian is the variety of the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan. Dari is the Afghan government's official term for the Persian language;Lazard, G.Darī – The New Persian ...

and

Tajiki Tajik, Tajik Persian, Tajiki Persian, also called Tajiki, is the variety of Persian language, Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan by ethnic Tajiks. It is closely related to neighbouring Dari of Afghanistan with which it forms a dialect co ...

). It is also used in some languages spoken in regions closer to, or in,

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

, such as Turkish, Albanian,

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

, Bulgarian, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian or

Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian ( / ), also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually i ...

to denote a negative response to a "yes or no" question. The dental click is sometimes accompanied by an upward motion of the head.WALS info on Para-linguistic usage of the dental click
/ref>

Notes

References

External links