Interdental consonants are produced by placing the tip of the tongue between the upper and lower front teeth. That differs from typical

dental consonant A dental consonant is a consonant articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , . In some languages, dentals are distinguished from other groups, such as alveolar consonants, in which the tongue contacts the gum ridge. Denta ...

s, which are articulated with the tongue against the ''back'' of the upper incisors. No language is known to contrast interdental and dental consonants. Interdental consonants may be transcribed with the

extIPA 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 ...

subscript, plus superscript bridge, as in , if precision is required, but it is more common to transcribe them as advanced alveolars, as in . Interdental consonants are rare cross-linguistically. Interdental realisations of otherwise-dental or alveolar consonants may occur as idiosyncrasies or as coarticulatory effects of a neighbouring interdental sound. The most commonly-occurring interdental consonants are the non-

sibilant Sibilants (from 'hissing') are fricative and affricate 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 w ...

fricatives (sibilants may be dental but do not appear as interdentals). Apparently, interdentals do not contrast with dental consonants in any language. Voiced and voiceless interdental fricatives appear in

American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lang ...

as the initial sounds of words like 'then' and 'thin'. In

British English British English is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom, especially Great Britain. More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadly, to ...

, the consonants are more likely to be dental . An interdental occurs in some varieties of

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

, and it may also occur in some varieties of English though the distribution and the usage of interdental in English are not clear. s are found in about a dozen

Philippine languages The Philippine languages or Philippinic are a proposed group by R. David Paul Zorc (1986) and Robert Blust (1991; 2005; 2019) that include all the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi, Indonesia—except Sama–Bajaw (language ...

, including Kagayanen ( Manobo branch), Karaga Mandaya ( Mansakan branch), Kalagan ( Mansakan branch), Southern Catanduanes Bicolano, and several varieties of Kalinga, as well as in the Bauchi languages of Nigeria. Interdental occurs in some dialects of Amis.

Mapuche The Mapuche ( , ) also known as Araucanians are a group of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina, including parts of Patagonia. The collective term refers to a wide-ranging e ...

has interdental , , and . In most

Indigenous Australian languages The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...

, there is a series of "dental" consonants, written ''th'', ''nh'', and (in some languages) ''lh''. They are always

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, ...

(pronounced by touching with the blade of the tongue) but may be formed in one of three different ways, depending on the language, the speaker, and how carefully the speaker pronounces the sound. They are apical interdental with the ''tip'' of the tongue visible between the teeth, as in ''th'' in American English; laminal interdental with the tip of the tongue down behind the lower teeth, so that the ''blade'' is visible between the teeth; and denti-alveolar , that is, with both the tip and the blade making contact with the back of the upper teeth and alveolar ridge, as in French ''t'', ''d'', ''n'', ''l''.

References

* {{articulation navbox Phonetics Coronal consonants

See also

References