Interdental consonants

Interdental (interdental) consonants - consonants pronounced when the tip of the tongue is located between the upper and lower front teeth. They differ from dental consonants in that when pronouncing the latter, the tongue is opposite the back surface of the upper incisors.

Interdental can be written in the same way as double- tooth (〈n̪͆〉), but more often they are written as advanced alveolar (〈n̟〉).

Interdental consonants are rare. Interdental implementations of dental and alveolar arise due to the individual characteristics of speech or as a result of accommodation to an adjacent interdental. The most common type of interdental is nonassociated fricatives (sibilants are dental, but not interdental). Apparently, interdental is not opposed to dentition in any language.

The voiced and deaf interdental spirants [ð̟, θ̟] are found in American English as the initial sounds in words such as 'that' and 'thin'. In British English, these sounds are usually dental [ð, θ] .

Interdental [l̟] is found in some variants of Italian and can occur in some varieties of English , although its use in English is not well understood.

Most Australian languages have a series of “dental” consonants spelled th, nh and (in some languages) lh . They are always laminar (that is, pronounced by the front of the tongue, and not just the tip), but can be formed in one of three ways, depending on the language, the speaker and the thoroughness of pronunciation:

1. Interdental , the pronunciation of which the tip of the tongue is visible between the teeth, as when pronouncing th in American English;
2. Interdental , the pronunciation of which the tip of the tongue is located behind the lower teeth, so that the front of the tongue is visible between the teeth;
3. Dento-alveolar , in the pronunciation of which the tip and the front of the tongue are in contact with the teeth and alveoli , like the French t , d , n , l.