| Above: | Voiceless alveolar plosive |
| Ipa Symbol: | t |
| Ipa Number: | 103 |
| Decimal: | 116 |
| Xsampa: | t |
| Braille: | t |
| Ipa Number: | 103 408 |
| Ipa Symbol: | t̪ |
| Decimal1: | 116 |
| Decimal2: | 810 |
| X-Sampa: | t_d |
| Braille: | t |
| Braille2: | 6 |
| Braille3: | 1456 |
The voiceless alveolar, dental and postalveolar plosives (or stops) are types of consonantal sounds used in almost all spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiceless dental, alveolar, and postalveolar plosives is (IPA|t), and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is t. The voiceless dental plosive can be distinguished with the underbridge diacritic, (IPA|t̪) and the postalveolar with a retraction line, (IPA|t̠), and the Extensions to the IPA have a double underline diacritic which can be used to explicitly specify an alveolar pronunciation, (IPA|t͇).
The pronounced as /[t]/ sound is a very common sound cross-linguistically. Most languages have at least a plain pronounced as /[t]/, and some distinguish more than one variety. Some languages without a pronounced as /[t]/ are colloquial Samoan (which also lacks an pronounced as /[n]/), Abau, and Nǁng of South Africa.
There are only a few languages which distinguish dental and alveolar stops, Kota, Toda, Venda and many Australian Aboriginal languages being a few of them; certain varieties of Hiberno-English also distinguish them (with [t̪] being the local realisation of the Standard English phoneme /θ/, represented by ⟨th⟩).
Here are features of the voiceless alveolar stop:
| IPA | Description | |
|---|---|---|
| pronounced as /t/ | plain t | |
| pronounced as /t̪/ | dental t | |
| pronounced as /t̠/ | postalveolar t | |
| pronounced as /tʰ/ | aspirated t | |
| pronounced as /tʲ/ | palatalized t | |
| pronounced as /tʷ/ | labialized t | |
| pronounced as /t̚/ | t with no audible release | |
| pronounced as /t̬/ | voiced t | |
| pronounced as /t͈/ | tense t | |
| pronounced as /tʼ/ | ejective t |
| Notes | ||||||||
| Aleut: '''t'''iistax̂ | pronounced as /[t̪iːstaχ]/ | 'dough' | Laminal denti-alveolar. | |||||
| Armenian | Armenian: [[Armenian alphabet|'''տ'''ուն]] | 'house' | Laminal denti-alveolar. | |||||
| Syriac: ܬܠܬ̱ܐ/ | pronounced as /[t̪lɑ]/ | 'three' | ||||||
| Bashkir | [[:wikt:дүрт|дүр'''т''']]/dür'''t''' | 'four' | Laminal denti-alveolar | |||||
| Belarusian: [[Belarusian alphabet|с'''т'''агоддзе]] | pronounced as /[s̪t̪äˈɣod̪d̪͡z̪ʲe]/ | 'century' | Laminal denti-alveolar. See Belarusian phonology | |||||
| Basque | Basa: [[Basque alphabet|'''t'''oki]] | pronounced as /[t̪oki]/ | 'place' | Laminal denti-alveolar. See Basque phonology | ||||
| pronounced as /[t̪umi]/ | 'you' | Laminal denti-alveolar, contrasts with aspirated form. See Bengali phonology | ||||||
| Catalan; Valencian: [[Catalan orthography|'''t'''erra]] | pronounced as /[ˈt̪ɛrɐ]/ | 'land' | Laminal denti-alveolar. See Catalan phonology | |||||
| Chuvash | ут | [ut] | 'horse' | |||||
| Czech: [[Czech orthography|'''t'''o'''t'''o]] | pronounced as /[ˈt̪ot̪o]/ | 'this' | Laminal denti-alveolar.[1] See Czech phonology | |||||
| pronounced as /[mɛ̀t̪]/ | 'child' | Laminal denti-alveolar, contrasts with alveolar pronounced as //t//. | ||||||
| Dutch | Dutch; Flemish: [[Dutch orthography|'''t'''aal]] | pronounced as /[t̪aːl̪]/ | 'language' | Laminal denti-alveolar. | ||||
| pronounced as /[t̪ʰɪn]/ | 'thin' | Laminal denti-alveolar. | In Dublin, it may be pronounced as /link/ instead. | See English phonology. | ||||
| Corresponds to pronounced as /link/. | ||||||||
| Southern Irish | ||||||||
| Ulster[2] | pronounced as /[t̪ɹeːn]/ | 'train' | Allophone of pronounced as //t// before pronounced as //r//, in free variation with an alveolar stop. | |||||
| Finnish: [[Finnish orthography|'''t'''u'''tt'''i]] | pronounced as /[ˈt̪ut̪ːi]/ | 'pacifier' | Laminal denti-alveolar. See Finnish phonology | |||||
| French: [[French orthography|'''t'''ordu]] | pronounced as /[t̪ɔʁd̪y]/ | 'crooked' | Laminal denti-alveolar. See French phonology | |||||
| Hakka | [[Chinese characters|他]]/[[Guangdong Romanization|'''t'''a3]] | pronounced as /[t̪ʰa˧]/ | 'he/she' | Laminal denti-alveolar, contrasts with an unaspirated form. | ||||
| Hindustani | Hindi | Hindi: [[Devanagari|'''ती'''न]]/tīn | pronounced as /[t̪iːn]/ | 'three' | Laminal denti-alveolar. | Contrasts with aspirated form <थ>. | See Hindustani phonology | |
| Urdu | Urdu: {{nq|تین/tīn | Contrasts with aspirated form <تھ>. | ||||||
| Indonesian: [[Malay alphabet|'''t'''abir]] | pronounced as /[t̪abir]/ | 'curtain' | Laminal denti-alveolar. | |||||
| Italian: [[Italian orthography|'''t'''ale]] | pronounced as /[ˈt̪ale]/ | 'such' | Laminal denti-alveolar. See Italian phonology | |||||
| Japanese: [[kanji|特別]]/ Japanese: [[Romanization of Japanese|'''t'''okubetsu]] | pronounced as /[t̪o̞kɯ̟ᵝbe̞t͡sɨᵝ]/ | 'special' | Laminal denti-alveolar. See Japanese phonology | |||||
| Kashubian[3] | ptôch | pronounced as /[ptɞx]/ | 'bird' | Laminal denti-alveolar. | ||||
| Kazakh: [[Kazakh alphabets|'''т'''ұз]] | pronounced as /[t̪us̪]/ | 'salt' | Laminal denti-alveolar. | |||||
| Kirghiz; Kyrgyz: [[Kyrgyz alphabets|'''т'''уз]] | pronounced as /[t̪us̪]/ | 'salt' | Laminal denti-alveolar. | |||||
| Latvian: [[Latvian orthography|'''t'''abula]] | pronounced as /[ˈt̪äbulä]/ | 'table' | Laminal denti-alveolar. See Latvian phonology | |||||
| Malayalam: [[Malayalam script|കാ'''ത്ത്''']] | pronounced as /[kaːt̪ːɨ̆]/ | 'waiting' | Contrasts /t̪ t ʈ d̪ ɖ/. | |||||
| Mapudungun; Mapuche: [[Mapudungun alphabet|fü'''ṯ'''a]] | pronounced as /[ˈfɘt̪ɜ]/ | 'husband' | Interdental. | |||||
| Marathi: [[Devanagari|'''त'''बला]] | pronounced as /[t̪əbˈlaː]/ | 'tabla' | Laminal denti-alveolar, contrasts with aspirated form. See Marathi phonology | |||||
| [[Devanagari|'''ता'''ली]] | pronounced as /[t̪äli]/ | 'clappinɡ' | Contrasts with aspirated form. See Nepali phonology | |||||
| darag | pronounced as /[t̪aɾaɡ]/ | 'whiskers' | Laminal denti-alveolar. | |||||
| ତାରା/tara | pronounced as /[t̪ärä]/ | 'star' | Laminal denti-alveolar, contrasts with aspirated form. | |||||
| pronounced as /[mut̪apɛt̪aˈpɛh]/ | 'keep clapping' | Dental. | ||||||
| Polish: [[Polish orthography|'''t'''om]] | 'volume' | Laminal denti-alveolar. See Polish phonology | ||||||
| Many dialects | Portuguese: [[Portuguese orthography|mon'''t'''anha]] | pronounced as /[mõˈt̪ɐɲɐ]/ | 'mountain' | Laminal denti-alveolar. Likely to have allophones among native speakers, as it may affricate to pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/ and/or pronounced as /link/ in certain environments. See Portuguese phonology | ||||
| ਤੇਲ/Urdu: {{nq|تیل | pronounced as /[t̪eːl]/ | 'oil' | Laminal denti-alveolar. | |||||
| Russian: [[Russian orthography|'''т'''олс'''т'''ый]] | pronounced as /[ˈt̪ʷo̞ɫ̪s̪t̪ɨ̞j]/ | 'fat' | Laminal denti-alveolar. See Russian phonology | |||||
| Scottish Gaelic[4] | Gaelic; Scottish Gaelic: '''t'''aigh | pronounced as /[t̪ʰɤj]/ | 'house' | |||||
| [[Serbian Cyrillic alphabet|'''т'''уга]]/[[Gaj's Latin alphabet|'''t'''uga]] | pronounced as /[t̪ǔːgä]/ | 'sorrow' | Laminal denti-alveolar. See Serbo-Croatian phonology | |||||
| Sinhala | pronounced as /[at̪ə]/ | 'hand' | ||||||
| Slovenian: [[Slovene alphabet|'''t'''ip]] | pronounced as /[ˈt̪îːp]/ | 'type' | Laminal denti-alveolar. See Slovene phonology | |||||
| Slovak | toto | pronounced as /[ˈt̪ot̪o]/ | 'this' | Laminal denti-alveolar. See Slovak phonology | ||||
| matag | [mat̪ag] | 'vomit' | Dentalization of alveolar plosive. | |||||
| Spanish; Castilian: [[Spanish orthography|'''t'''ango]] | pronounced as /[ˈt̪ãŋɡo̞]/ | 'tango' | Laminal denti-alveolar. See Spanish phonology | |||||
| Swedish: [[Swedish alphabet|'''t'''åg]] | pronounced as /[ˈt̪ʰoːɡ]/ | 'train' | Laminal denti-alveolar. See Swedish phonology | |||||
| Telugu: [[Telugu script|'''త'''ప్పు]] | pronounced as /[t̪apːu]/ | 'wrong' | Contrasts between aspirated and unaspirated forms. | |||||
| Turkish: [[Turkish alphabet|a'''t''']] | pronounced as /[ät̪]/ | 'horse' | Laminal denti-alveolar. See Turkish phonology | |||||
| Ukrainian[5] | Ukrainian: [[Ukrainian alphabet|бра'''т''']] | pronounced as /[brɑt̪]/ | 'brother' | Laminal denti-alveolar. See Ukrainian phonology | ||||
| – | Laminal denti-alveolar. Slightly aspirated before vowels. | |||||||
| Vietnamese: [[Vietnamese alphabet|'''t'''uần]] | pronounced as /[t̪wən˨˩]/ | 'week' | Laminal denti-alveolar, contrasts with aspirated form. See Vietnamese phonology | |||||
| Zapotec | tant | pronounced as /[t̪ant̪]/ | 'so much' | Laminal denti-alveolar. | ||||
| Kabardian: [[Cyrillic script|'''т'''фы]] | 'five' | ||||||
| Arabic | Egyptian | [[Arabic alphabet|توكة]]|rtl=yes/ | pronounced as /[ˈtoːkæ]/ | 'barrette' | See Egyptian Arabic phonology | ||
| Syriac: ܒܝܬܐ/ | pronounced as /[beːta]/ | 'house' | Most speakers. In the Tyari, Barwari and Southern dialects θ is used. | ||||
| Cantonese | 跌/dit | [ti:t̚˧] | 'fall' (v.) | See Cantonese Phonology | |||
| 鐵/鉄/tit | [tʰi:t̚˧] | 'iron' | |||||
| Chechen: [[Cyrillic script|'''т'''арсал]]/Chechen: '''t'''arsal | pronounced as /[tɑːrsəl]/ | 'squirrel' | |||||
| Standard | Danish: [[Danish alphabet|'''d'''åse]] | pronounced as /[ˈtɔ̽ːsə]/ | 'can' (n.) | Usually transcribed in IPA with (IPA|d̥) or (IPA|d). Contrasts with the affricate pronounced as /link/ or aspirated stop pronounced as /[tʰ]/ (depending on the dialect), which are usually transcribed in IPA with (IPA|tˢ) or (IPA|t). See Danish phonology | |||
| Dutch; Flemish: [[Dutch orthography|'''t'''aal]] | pronounced as /[taːɫ]/ | 'language' | |||||
| Most speakers | 'tick' | See English phonology | |||||
| Varies between apical and laminal, with the latter being predominant. | |||||||
| Hebrew | Hebrew: [[hebrew alphabet|'''ת'''מונה]]|rtl=yes | pronounced as /[tmuˈna]/ | 'image' | see Modern Hebrew phonology | |||
| Hungarian: [[Hungarian orthography|'''t'''u'''t'''aj]] | pronounced as /[ˈtutɒj]/ | 'raft' | See Hungarian phonology | ||||
| Kabardian: [[Cyrillic script|'''т'''хуы]] | 'five' | ||||||
| Central Khmer: [[Khmer script|តែ]]/ | pronounced as /[tae]/ | 'tea' | See Khmer phonology | ||||
| Korean: [[Hangul|대숲]]/Korean: [[Revised Romanization of Korean|'''d'''aesup]] | pronounced as /[tɛsup̚]/ | 'bamboo forest' | See Korean phonology | ||||
| Kurdish | Northern | Kurdish: [[Kurdish alphabet|'''t'''u]] | pronounced as /[tʰʊ]/ | 'you' | See Kurdish phonology | ||
| Central | Kurdish: [[Kurdish alphabet|تەوێڵ]] | pronounced as /[tʰəweːɫ]/ | 'forehead' | ||||
| Southern | Kurdish: [[Kurdish alphabet|تێوڵ]] | pronounced as /[tʰeːwɨɫ]/ | |||||
| Luxembourgish; Letzeburgesch: '''d'''ënn | pronounced as /[tən]/ | 'thin' | Less often voiced pronounced as /link/. It is usually transcribed pronounced as //d//, and it contrasts with voiceless aspirated form, which is usually transcribed pronounced as //t//. See Luxembourgish phonology | ||||
| Malayalam: [[Malayalam script|കാ'''റ്റ്''']] | pronounced as /[kaːtːɨ̆]/ | 'wind' | Contrasts /t̪ t ʈ d̪ ɖ/. | ||||
| Maltese | Norwegian: [[Maltese alphabet|'''t'''assew]] | pronounced as /[tasˈsew]/ | 'true' | ||||
| Mandarin | 地/dì | [ti˥˩] | 'ground' | See Mandarin Phonology | |||
| 梯/tī | [tʰi˥˥] | 'ladder/stairs' | |||||
| Mapudungun; Mapuche: [[Mapudungun alphabet|fü'''t'''a]] | pronounced as /[ˈfɘtɜ]/ | 'elderly' | |||||
| darawa | pronounced as /[taɾawa]/ | 'greedy' | |||||
| Sichuan Yi; Nuosu: [[Yi script|ꄉ]]/Sichuan Yi; Nuosu: [[Yi script|'''d'''a]] | pronounced as /[ta˧]/ | 'place' | Contrasts aspirated and unaspirated forms | ||||
| Portuguese[6] | Some dialects | Portuguese: [[Portuguese orthography|'''t'''roço]] | pronounced as /[ˈtɾɔsu]/ | 'thing' (pejorative) | Allophone before alveolar pronounced as /link/. In other dialects pronounced as //ɾ// takes a denti-alveolar allophone instead. See Portuguese phonology | ||
| Tagalog: [[Filipino orthography|ma'''t'''amis]] | pronounced as /[mɐtɐˈmis]/ | 'sweet' | See Tagalog phonology | ||||
| pronounced as /[taː˧]/ | 'eye' | Contrasts with an aspirated form. | |||||
| West Frisian | Western Frisian: '''t'''osk | pronounced as /[ˈtosk]/ | 'tooth' | See West Frisian phonology | |||
| Yele | [[Yele_language#Orthography|'''d'''êê]] | pronounced as /[t̠əː]/ | 'tongue' | Contrasts /t̪ t̪͡p t̪ʲ t̠ t̠͡p t̠ʲ/. |
| Arabic | Arabic: {{Script|Arab|تين/ | pronounced as /[tiːn]/ | 'fig' | Laminal denti-alveolar or alveolar, depending on the speaker's native dialect. See Arabic phonology | ||
| pronounced as /[toːk]/ | 'talk' | Laminal denti-alveolar for some speakers, alveolar for other speakers. | ||||
| pronounced as /[tʰɔk]/ | ||||||
| pronounced as /[tʰɒːk]/ | ||||||
| Standard | German: [[German orthography|'''T'''ochter]] | pronounced as /[ˈtɔxtɐ]/ | 'daughter' | Varies between laminal denti-alveolar, laminal alveolar and apical alveolar. See Standard German phonology | ||
| Greek, Modern (1453-);: [[Greek alphabet|'''τ'''ρία]] [[Romanization of Greek|'''t'''ria]] | pronounced as /[ˈtɾiä]/ | 'three' | Varies between dental, laminal denti-alveolar and alveolar, depending on the environment. See Modern Greek phonology | |||
| Malay | تڠکڤ/tangkap | pronounced as /[t̪äŋ.käp̚]/ | 'catch' | More commonly dental. Often unreleased in syllable codas. See Malay phonology | ||
| Norwegian: [[Norwegian alphabet|'''d'''ans]] | pronounced as /[t̻ɑns]/ | 'dance' | Varies between laminal denti-alveolar and laminal alveolar. It is usually transcribed pronounced as //d//. It may be partially voiced pronounced as /link/, and it contrasts with voiceless aspirated form, which is usually transcribed pronounced as //t//. See Norwegian phonology | |||
| Persian: {{nq|توت | pronounced as /[t̪ʰuːt̪ʰ]/ | 'berry' | Varies between laminal denti-alveolar and apical alveolar. See Persian phonology | |||
| Slovak: [[Slovak alphabet|'''t'''o]] | pronounced as /[t̻ɔ̝]/ | 'that' | Varies between laminal denti-alveolar and laminal alveolar. See Slovak phonology | |||
pronounced as /navigation/