Dental click
| Dental click (plain velar) | ||
|---|---|---|
| k͡ǀ | ||
| ǀ | ||
| ᵏʇ | ||
| IPA Number | 177, 201 | |
| Encoding | ||
| Entity (decimal) | ǀʇ | |
| Unicode (hex) | U+01C0 U+0287 | |
| X-SAMPA | |\ | |
| Braille |   | |
| ||
| Audio sample | ||
 source · help | ||
| Voiced dental click | |
|---|---|
| ǀ̬ | |
| ᶢǀ ᵈǀ | |
| ʇ̬ | |
| ᶢʇ |
| Dental nasal click | |
|---|---|
| ǀ̃ | |
| ᵑǀ ⁿǀ | |
| ʇ̃ | |
| ᵑʇ |
Dental (or more precisely denti-alveolar)[1] clicks are a family of click consonants found, as constituents of words, only in Africa and in the Damin ritual jargon of Australia.
In English, the tut-tut! (British spelling, "tutting") or tsk! tsk! (American spelling, "tsking") sound used to express disapproval or pity is an unreleased[2] dental click, although it is not a lexical phoneme (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).[3]
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the place of articulation of these sounds is ⟨ǀ⟩, a vertical bar. Prior to 1989, ⟨ʇ⟩ was the IPA letter for the dental clicks. 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 vertical bar is indistinguishable from an el or capital i.[4] Either letter may be combined with a second letter to indicate the manner of articulation, though this is commonly omitted for tenuis clicks.
In official IPA transcription, the click letter is combined with a ⟨k ɡ ŋ q ɢ ɴ⟩ via a tie bar, though ⟨k⟩ is frequently omitted. Many authors instead use a superscript ⟨k ɡ ŋ q ɢ ɴ⟩ without the tie bar, again often neglecting the ⟨k⟩. 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; it does not distinguish velar from uvular dental clicks. Common dental clicks are:
| Trans. I | Trans. II | Trans. III | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| (velar) | |||
| ⟨k͜ǀ⟩ | ⟨ᵏǀ⟩ | ⟨ǀ⟩ | tenuis dental click |
| ⟨k͜ǀʰ⟩ | ⟨ᵏǀʰ⟩ | ⟨ǀʰ⟩ | aspirated dental click |
| ⟨ɡ͜ǀ⟩ | ⟨ᶢǀ⟩ | ⟨ǀ̬⟩ | voiced dental click |
| ⟨ŋ͜ǀ⟩ | ⟨ᵑǀ⟩ | ⟨ǀ̃⟩ | dental nasal click |
| ⟨ŋ͜ǀ̥ʰʰ⟩ | ⟨ᵑǀ̥ʰʰ⟩ | ⟨ǀ̥̃ʰʰ⟩ | aspirated dental nasal click |
| ⟨ŋ͜ǀˀ⟩ | ⟨ᵑǀˀ⟩ | ⟨ǀ̃ˀ⟩ | glottalized dental nasal click |
| (uvular) | |||
| ⟨q͜ǀ⟩ | ⟨
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