This page discusses a phonological phenomenon. For other uses, see Flap. The International Phonetic Alphabet. ... Phonetic (pho-NET-ic) is a nationwide voicemail-to-text messaging service available for most digital mobile phones in which a subscriber is provided a custom voice mailbox for the purpose of receiving all incoming voice messages as actual transcribed text for reading via short messaging (also known as SMS... Unicode is an industry standard whose goal is to provide the means by which text of all forms and languages can be encoded for use by computers. ... The word Flap can refer to several things. ...

Flapping is a phonological process found in many dialects of English, especially American, Canadian and Australian English, by which prevocalic /t/ and /d/ surface as the alveolar flap [ɾ] after sonorants other than ŋ, m, and (in some environments) l. Phonology (Greek phone = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics closely associated with phonetics. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Australian English (AuE) is the form of the English language used in Australia. ... The alveolar tap/flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ...

• after vowel: butter
• after r: barter
• after l: faculty (but not immediately post-tonic: alter --> al[tʰ]er, not *al[ɾ]er)

Flapping is a specific type of lenition, specifically intervocalic weakening. For people with the merger these following words sound the same or almost the same: Lenition is a kind of consonant mutation that appears in many languages. ...

• matter/madder
• grater/grader
• metal/medal

For most (but not all) speakers the merger does not occur when an intervocalic /t/ or /d/ is followed by a syllabic 'n', so written and ridden remain distinct. A non-negligible number of speakers (including pockets in the Boston area) lack the rule that glottalizes t and d before syllabic n, and therefore flap /t/ and /d/ in this environment.^{[Citation needed]} Pairs like potent : impotent, with the former having a preglottalized unreleased t or a glottal stop (but not a flap) and the latter having either an aspirated t or a flap, suggest that the level of stress on the preceding vowel may play a role in the applicability of glottalization and flapping before syllabic n.

Flapping does not occur in most dialects when the /t/ or /d/ immediately precedes a stressed vowel, as in retail, but can flap in this environment when it spans a word boundary, as in "got it" --> [gɑɾɪt], and when a word boundary is embedded within a word, as in "buttinsky". Australian and Cockney English also flap word-internally before a stressed vowel in words like "fourteen".^{[Citation needed]}

In many accents, such words as riding and writing continue to be distinguished by the preceding vowel: though the consonant distinction is neutralized, the underlying voice distinction continues to select the allophone of the /aɪ/ phoneme preceding it. Thus for many North Americans, riding is [ɹɑɪɾɪŋ] while writing is [ɹɐɪɾɪŋ]. In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar phones that belong to the same phoneme. ... In human language, a phoneme is a set of phones (speech sounds or sign elements) that are cognitively equivalent. ...

The cluster [nt] can also be flapped; the IPA symbol for a nasal flap is [ɾ̃]. As a result, in quick speech, words like winner and winter can become homophonous. Flapping does not occur for most speakers in words like 'carpenter' and 'ninety', which instead surface with [d]. The International Phonetic Alphabet. ...

Flapping also occurs in other languages, such as Western Apache (and other Southern Athabaskan languages). In Western Apache, intervocalic /t/ similarly is realized as [ɾ] in intervocalic position. This process occurs even over word boundaries. However, flapping is blocked when /t/ is the initial consonant of a stem (in other words flapping occurs only when /t/ is stem-internal or in a prefix). Unlike English, flapping is not affected by suprasegmentals (in other words stress or tone). Links Western Apache-English Dictionary (White Mountain) White Mountain Apache Tribe (Arizona Intertribal Council) San Carlos Apache Tribe (Arizona Intertribal Council) Tonto Apache Tribe (Arizona Intertribal Council) Yavapai-Apache Nation Official Website Yavapai-Apache Nation (Arizona Intertribal Council) White Mountain Apache Tribe White Mountain Apache photographs map of Fort Apache... Southern Athabaskan (also Apachean) refers to members of the Athabaskan language family (including Navajo) spoken in the Northern American Southwest. ...

See also

• Flap consonant