A 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. This contrasts with apical consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the tongue apex (tongue tip) only. This distinction applies only to coronal consonants, which use the front of the tongue. In speech there are different ways of producing a consonant. ... In phonetics, an obstruent is a consonant sound formed by obstructing the airway. ... Clicks are stops produced with two articulatory closures in the oral cavity. ... A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... Ejective consonants are a class of consonants which may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants in a language. ... Implosive consonants are plosives (rarely affricates) with a glottalic ingressive airstream mechanism. ... Affricate consonants begin like stops (most often an alveolar, such as or ), but release as a fricative such as or (or, a couple languages, into a fricative trill) rather than directly into the following vowel. ... Fricatives (or spirants) are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. ... A sibilant, or a strident fricative, is a type of fricative, made by speeding up air through a narrow channel and directing it over the sharp edge of the teeth. ... In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant is a member of a class of speech sounds that are continuants produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract. ... A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ... In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator is thrown against another. ... In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. ... Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. ... Liquid consonants, or liquids, are approximant consonants that are not classified as semivowels (glides) because they do not correspond phonetically to specific vowels (in the way that, for example, the initial in English yes corresponds to ). The class of liquids can be divided into lateral liquids and rhotics. ... Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-07-18, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... Semivowels (also called semiconsonants or glides) are vowels that function phonemically as consonants. ... Laterals are L-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue. ... 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... The International Phonetic Alphabet. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet. ... Within phonetics and phonology, a phone is a speech-sound considered as a physical event without regard to its place in the sound-system of semantics of a language. ... An apical consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the apex of the tongue (i. ... Coronal consonants are articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue. ...

Laminal vs apical is not a very common contrast within a language, and where it occurs it is typically phonemic with fricatives and affricates rather than stops. The Basque language uses this distinction in the alveolar region, as does Serbo-Croatian. Polish and Mandarin make the distinction in with postalveolar consonants. However, many native languages of California make this distinction with plosives as well. This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the superior teeth. ... Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian (srpskohrvatski or hrvatskosrpski), earlier also Serbo-Croat, is a name for a language or group of dialects/languages of the Western group of the South Slavic languages. ... Postalveolar (or palato-alveolar) consonants are consonants articulated with the tip of the tongue between the alveolar ridge (the place of articulation for alveolar consonants) and the palate (the place of articulation for palatal consonants). ...

Nonetheless, it is an important detail with stops when achieving a native accent. Much of the difference between French and English, for example, is that French coronals are laminal (often mistakenly called "dental") while English coronals are apical. Mispronouncing this detail affects not only the sound of the consonants, but interferes with the French vowels as well.

Because laminal consonants use the flat of the tongue, they cover a broader area of contact than apical consonants. Laminal consonants in some languages have been recorded with a broad occlusion (closure) covering the entire front of the mouth, from the hard palate to the teeth. Therefore it is difficult to compare the two: alveolar laminals and apicals are two different articulations.

A very common laminal articulation is sometimes called denti-alveolar; it spans the alveolar ridge to the teeth, but is a little further forward than other alveolar laminal consonants which cover more of the alveolar ridge (and might be considered postalveolar). This is the situation for French. 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. ...

Part of the confusion in naming laminal consonants is literally point of view. When looking at a person pronouncing a laminal alveolar or denti-alveolar, the tip of the tongue can be seen touching the back of the teeth, or even protruding between the teeth. This gives them the common name of dental. However, the important element acoustically is where the rear-most occlusion is, for this is the point where the resonant chamber in the mouth terminates, and this determines the size and shape, and therefore the accoustics, of the oral cavity, which produces the harmonics of the vowels. By this consideration the French coronals are alveolar, and differ from English alveolars primarily in being laminal rather than apical (that is, in French the tongue is flatter). There are true laminal dentals in some languages, with no alveolar contact, and they sound different from the French consonants. Nevertheless, the breadth of contact has some importance, for it influences the shape of the tongue further back, and therefore the shape of the resonant cavity. Also, if the release of a denti-alveolar consonant is not abrupt, the tongue may peel off from the roof of the mouth from back to front, in effect shifting from an alveolar to a dental pronunciation. 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. ... Acoustics is a branch of physics and is the study of sound, mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids. ... The mouth, also known as the buccal cavity or the oral cavity, is the opening through which an animal or human takes in food. ...

See also

• List of phonetic topics