Dental - Definition and Overview

Dentals are consonants articulated with either the lower or the upper teeth, or both. In French, Italian, and Spanish t, d, n, and l are all dental, whereas they are alveolar in English.

The dental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

IPA	Description	Example
		Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
IPA-voiceless_dental_plosive.png image:IPA-voiceless_dental_plosive.png	voiceless dental plosive	Spanish	toro	[t̪oɾo]	bull
IPA-voiced_dental_plosive.png image:IPA-voiced_dental_plosive.png	voiced dental plosive	Spanish	donde	[d̪ɔn̪d̪e]	where
IPA-dental_nasal.png image:IPA-dental_nasal.png	Dental nasal	Spanish	onda	[ɔn̪d̪a]	wave
IPA-dental_flap.png image:IPA-dental_flap.png	dental flap
IPA-dental_trill.png image:IPA-dental_trill.png	dental trill	Marshallese	Ebadon	[e.bɑ.r̪on̪]	Ebadon
	voiceless dental fricative	English	thing	[θiŋ]	thing
	voiced dental fricative	English	this	[ðɪs]	this
IPA-voiced_dental_approximant.png image:IPA-voiced_dental_approximant.png	voiced dental approximant	Spanish	codo	[koð̞o]	elbow
IPA-dental_lateral_approximant.png image:IPA-dental_lateral_approximant.png	dental lateral approximant	Kaititj	l̪inp	[l̪inp]	armpit
	dental click	Xhosa	ukúkǀola	[ukukǀola]	to grind fine

See also

• place of articulation
• List of phonetics topics