Dental click
Encyclopedia
Dental clicks are a family of click consonant
s found, as constituents of words, only in Africa
and in the Damin
ritual jargon of Australia
. The tut-tut! (British spelling) or tsk! tsk! (American spelling) sound used to express disapproval or pity is a dental click, although it isn't a speech sound in that context.
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet
that represents the place of articulation
of these sounds is ǀ, a pipe. Prior to 1989, [ʇ] was the IPA representation of the tenuis dental click. It is still occasionally used where the symbol [ǀ] would be confounded with other symbols, such as prosody
marks, or simply because in many fonts the pipe is indistinguishable from an el or capital I. Either letter may be combined with a second letter to indicate the manner of articulation
, though this is commonly omitted for tenuis clicks, and increasingly a diacritic is used instead. Common dental clicks 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.
does not have a dental click (or any click consonant, for that matter) as a phoneme, but a plain dental click does occur as an interjection
, usually written tsk or tut (and often reduplicated
tsk-tsk or tut-tut), used to express commiseration, disapproval, irritation, or to call a small animal. Note, however, that while these words often represent a dental click and may be pronounced as such, they are also frequently pronounced /tɪsk/ or /tʌt/ (spelling pronunciation
s), and in such cases are not dental clicks.
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: [ᵑ̊ʇ, ᵑʇ, ᵑ̊ʇʷ, ᵑʇʷ].
Hungarian
does not have any click consonant as a phoneme, but the dental click does occur as an interjection, usually written cöccögés, used to express commiseration, disapproval, or irritation. German
, Portuguese
and French
use the dental click in exactly the same way as English, though it is usually rendered ts or tss (German), tsc (Portuguese) or "tut-tut" (French) in writing.
The dental click is used para-linguistically in several languages, mostly Middle-Eastern ones such as Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish
and Pashto
, also Persian
where it is transcribed as 'نچ'/'noch' (including Dari
and Tajiki), and also some languages spoken in regions closer to, or in, Europe
, such as Greek
, Bulgarian
, Italian
, Portuguese
, Romanian
or Serbian
to denote a negative response to a "yes or no" question. The dental click is sometimes accompanied by an upward motion of the head.
Click consonant
Clicks are speech sounds found as consonants in many languages of southern Africa, and in three languages of East Africa. Examples of these sounds familiar to English speakers are the tsk! tsk! or tut-tut used to express disapproval or pity, the tchick! used to spur on a horse, and the...
s found, as constituents of words, only in Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
and in the Damin
Damin
Damin was a ceremonial language register used by the advanced initiated men of the Lardil and the Yangkaal tribes in Aboriginal Australia. Both inhabit islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Lardil on Mornington Island, the largest island of the Wesley Group, and the Yangkaal and Forsyth Islands...
ritual jargon of Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. The tut-tut! (British spelling) or tsk! tsk! (American spelling) sound used to express disapproval or pity is a dental click, although it isn't a speech sound in that context.
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
that represents the place of articulation
Place of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation of a consonant is the point of contact where an obstruction occurs in the vocal tract between an articulatory gesture, an active articulator , and a passive location...
of these sounds is ǀ, a pipe. Prior to 1989, [ʇ] was the IPA representation of the tenuis dental click. It is still occasionally used where the symbol [ǀ] would be confounded with other symbols, such as prosody
Prosody (linguistics)
In linguistics, prosody is the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech. Prosody may reflect various features of the speaker or the utterance: the emotional state of the speaker; the form of the utterance ; the presence of irony or sarcasm; emphasis, contrast, and focus; or other elements of...
marks, or simply because in many fonts the pipe is indistinguishable from an el or capital I. Either letter may be combined with a second letter to indicate the manner of articulation
Manner of articulation
In linguistics, manner of articulation describes how the tongue, lips, jaw, and other speech organs are involved in making a sound. Often the concept is only used for the production of consonants, even though the movement of the articulars will also greatly alter the resonant properties of the...
, though this is commonly omitted for tenuis clicks, and increasingly a diacritic is used instead. Common dental clicks are:
| IPA I | IPA II | Description |
|---|---|---|
| [ǀ] or [ʇ] | tenuis Tenuis consonant In linguistics, a tenuis consonant is a stop or affricate which is unvoiced, unaspirated, and unglottalized. That is, it has a "plain" phonation like , with a voice onset time close to zero, as in Spanish p, t, ch, k, or as in English p, t, k after s .In transcription, tenuis consonants are not... dental click |
|
| [ǀʰ] or [ʇʰ] | aspirated dental click | |
| [ǀ̬] or [ʇ̬] | [ᶢǀ] or [ᶢʇ] | voiced dental click |
| [ǀ̃] or [ʇ̃] | [ᵑǀ] or [ᵑʇ] | nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... dental click |
| [ǀ̥̃ʰ] or [ʇ̥̃ʰ] | [ᵑ̊ǀʰ] or [ᵑ̊ʇʰ] | aspirated nasal dental click |
| [ǀˀ, ǀ̥̃ˀ] or [ʇˀ, ʇ̥̃ˀ] | [ᵑ̊ǀˀ] or [ᵑ̊ʇˀ]) | glottalized Glottalization Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other sonorants is most often realized as creaky voice... nasal dental click |
The last is what is heard in the sound sample at right, as non-native speakers tend to glottalize clicks to avoid nasalizing them.
Features
Features of dental clicks:- The forward place of articulationPlace of articulationIn articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation of a consonant is the point of contact where an obstruction occurs in the vocal tract between an articulatory gesture, an active articulator , and a passive location...
is dental or alveolarAlveolar consonantAlveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...
and laminalLaminal consonantA laminal consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, which is the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue on the top. This contrasts with apical consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the tongue apex only...
, which means it is articulated with the tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridgeAlveolar ridgeAn alveolar ridge is one of the two jaw ridges either on the roof of the mouth between the upper teeth and the hard palate or on the bottom of the mouth behind the lower teeth. The alveolar ridges contain the sockets of the teeth....
or the upper teeth. (See denti-alveolarDenti-alveolarIn linguistics, a denti-alveolar consonant is a consonant that is articulated with a flat tongue against the alveolar ridge and upper teeth, such as and in languages such as Spanish and French...
.) The release is a noisy, affricateAffricate consonantAffricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...
-like sound.
In English
EnglishEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
does not have a dental click (or any click consonant, for that matter) as a phoneme, but a plain dental click does occur as an interjection
Interjection
In grammar, an interjection or exclamation is a word used to express an emotion or sentiment on the part of the speaker . Filled pauses such as uh, er, um are also considered interjections...
, usually written tsk or tut (and often reduplicated
Reduplication
Reduplication in linguistics is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word is repeated exactly or with a slight change....
tsk-tsk or tut-tut), used to express commiseration, disapproval, irritation, or to call a small animal. Note, however, that while these words often represent a dental click and may be pronounced as such, they are also frequently pronounced /tɪsk/ or /tʌt/ (spelling pronunciation
Spelling pronunciation
A spelling pronunciation is a pronunciation that, instead of reflecting the way the word was pronounced by previous generations of speakers, is a rendering in sound of the word's spelling.-Examples of English words with common spelling pronunciations:...
s), and in such cases are not dental clicks.
In other languages
Dental clicks are common in Khoisan languagesKhoisan languages
The Khoisan languages are the click languages of Africa which do not belong to other language families. They include languages indigenous to southern and eastern Africa, though some, such as the Khoi languages, appear to have moved to their current locations not long before the Bantu expansion...
and the neighboring Nguni languages, such as Zulu
Zulu language
Zulu is the language of the Zulu people with about 10 million speakers, the vast majority of whom live in South Africa. Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa as well as being understood by over 50% of the population...
and Xhosa
Xhosa language
Xhosa is one of the official languages of South Africa. Xhosa is spoken by approximately 7.9 million people, or about 18% of the South African population. Like most Bantu languages, Xhosa is a tonal language, that is, the same sequence of consonants and vowels can have different meanings when said...
. In the Nguni languages, the tenuis click
Tenuis consonant
In linguistics, a tenuis consonant is a stop or affricate which is unvoiced, unaspirated, and unglottalized. That is, it has a "plain" phonation like , with a voice onset time close to zero, as in Spanish p, t, ch, k, or as in English p, t, k after s .In transcription, tenuis consonants are not...
is denoted by the letter c, the murmured click
Breathy voice
Breathy voice is a phonation in which the vocal cords vibrate, as they do in normal voicing, but are held further apart, so that a larger volume of air escapes between them. This produces an audible noise...
by gc, the aspirated click
Aspiration (phonetics)
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...
by ch, and the nasal click
Nasal consonant
A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
by nc. The prenasalized clicks are written ngc and nkc.
The Cushitic language Dahalo
Dahalo language
Dahalo is an endangered South Cushitic language spoken by at most 400 people on the Kenyan coast near the mouth of the Tana River. The Dahalo, former elephant hunters, are dispersed among Swahili and other Bantu peoples, with no villages of their own, and are bilingual in those languages...
has four clicks, all of them nasalized: [ᵑ̊ʇ, ᵑʇ, ᵑ̊ʇʷ, ᵑʇʷ].
Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
does not have any click consonant as a phoneme, but the dental click does occur as an interjection, usually written cöccögés, used to express commiseration, disapproval, or irritation. German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
use the dental click in exactly the same way as English, though it is usually rendered ts or tss (German), tsc (Portuguese) or "tut-tut" (French) in writing.
The dental click is used para-linguistically in several languages, mostly Middle-Eastern ones such as Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
and Pashto
Pashto language
Pashto , known as Afghani in Persian and Pathani in Punjabi , is the native language of the indigenous Pashtun people or Afghan people who are found primarily between an area south of the Amu Darya in Afghanistan and...
, also Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
where it is transcribed as 'نچ'/'noch' (including Dari
Dari (Eastern Persian)
Dari or Fārsī-ye Darī in historical terms refers to the Persian court language of the Sassanids. In contemporary usage, the term refers to the dialects of modern Persian language spoken in Afghanistan, and hence known as Afghan Persian in some Western sources. It is the term officially recognized...
and Tajiki), and also some languages spoken in regions closer to, or in, Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, such as Greek
Modern Greek
Modern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...
, Bulgarian
Bulgarian language
Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
or Serbian
Serbian language
Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
to denote a negative response to a "yes or no" question. The dental click is sometimes accompanied by an upward motion of the head.
| Language | Word | IPA International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic... | Meaning | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hadza Hadza language Hadza is a language isolate spoken by fewer than a thousand Hadza people along the shores of Lake Eyasi in Tanzania, the last full-time hunter-gatherers in Africa. Despite the small number of speakers, language use is vigorous, with most children learning it... |
[ǀinambo] – [ʇinambo] | 'firefly' | |||
| [ǀʰeta] – [ʇʰeta] | 'to be happy' | ||||
| [miᵑǀa] – [miʇ̃a] | 'to smack one's lips' | ||||
| [taᵑǀˀe] – [taʇ̃ˀe] | 'rope' | ||||
| Zulu Zulu language Zulu is the language of the Zulu people with about 10 million speakers, the vast majority of whom live in South Africa. Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa as well as being understood by over 50% of the population... |
icici Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome... |
[iːˈǀiːǀi] – [iːˈʇiːʇi] | 'earing' | ||
| ukuchaza Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome... |
[úɠuˈǀʰáːza̤] – [úɠuˈʇʰáːza̤] | 'to fascinate' | |||
| isigcino Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome... |
[ísiᶢǀʱǐ̤ːno] – [ísiʇ̬ʱǐ̤ːno] | 'end' | |||
| incwancwa Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome... |
[iᵑǀwáːᵑǀwa] – [iʇ̃wáːʇ̃wa] | 'sour corn meal' | |||
| ingcosi Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome... |
[iᵑǀʱǒ̤ːsi] – [iʇ̃ʱǒ̤ːsi] | 'a bit' | |||
See also
- Dental lateral clicks
- Alveolar clicks
- Bilabial clicks
- Lateral clicks
- Palatal clicks
- Retroflex clicks
- List of phonetics topics