Dental

Dentals are consonants such as t, d, n, and l articulated with either the lower or the upper teeth, or both, rather than with the gum ridge as in English. (The latter articulation is called alveolar.)

True dental consonants are relatively uncommon. French, Italian, and Spanish t, d, n, and l are often called dental. However, they are actually alveolar, or perhaps denti-alveolar; the difference between the Romance languages and English is not so much where the tongue contacts the roof of the mouth, as which part of the tongue makes the contact. In English it is the tip of the tongue (such sounds are termed apical), whereas in the Romance languages it is the flat of the tongue just above the tip (such sounds are called laminal).

The confusion with dental articulation comes from looking at the tongue from outside the mouth: With laminal (denti-)alveolar consonants, the tip of the tongue can be seen touching the teeth. However, it is the rear-most point of contact that is most relevant, for this is what defines the acoustic space of the mouth and gives a consonant its characteristic sound. In the case of the Romance languages, the rear-most contact is alveolar or sometimes slightly pre-alveolar.

This laminal/apical difference is important. If an English speaker trying to speak French simply moves the tongue forward to make the contact dental, while maintaining an apical articulation, any surrounding front rounded vowels will be very difficult to pronounce. If, however, the speaker tucks the tip of the tongue out of the way (such as behind the lower teeth), and makes contact at the same place as in English, the consonants will sound better, and the vowels will be much easier to pronounce. Thus a good phonetic description of a language will specify whether coronal consonants are laminal or apical as well as whether they are dental or alveolar.

Nevertheless, apical dentals occur in some languages. In Albanian, there are two els, one apical alveolar, and one apical dental. However, the apical dental consonant also has retracted tongue root—that is, it is pharyngealized.

The dental/denti-alveolar consonants as transcribed by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

IPA	Description	Example
		Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
	dental nasal	Spanish	onda	[on̪d̪a]	wave
	voiceless dental plosive	Spanish	toro	[t̪oɾo]	bull
	voiced dental plosive	Spanish	donde	[d̪on̪d̪e]	where
	voiceless dental sibilant fricative	Polish	kosa	[kos̪a]	scythe
	voiced dental sibilant fricative	Polish	koza	[koz̪a]	goat
	voiceless dental nonsibilant fricative (also often called "interdental")	English	thing	[θɪŋ]	thing
	voiced dental nonsibilant fricative (also often called "interdental")	English	this	[ðɪs]	this
	voiced dental approximant	Spanish	codo	[koð̞o]	elbow
	dental lateral approximant	Albanian	halla	[hal̪ˤa]	armpit
	dental flap
	dental trill	Marshallese	Ebadon	[ebɑr̪on̪]	Ebadon
	dental ejective
	voiced dental implosive
	dental click release	Xhosa	ukúcola	[uk’úkǀola]	to grind fine

See also

• Place of articulation
• List of phonetics topics