Voiced dental plosive - Definition and Overview

The voiced dental plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is d̪, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is d_d. This is the symbol for the voiced alveolar plosive with the "bridge below" diacritic meaning dental. The voiceless dental plosive does not occur in English, but is similar to the sound of the letter 'd', except the tongue is touching the back of the teeth and not the alveolar ridge.

IPA - Unicode	d̪
IPA - image
X-SAMPA	d_d
Kirshenbaum	d[
Sound sample

Features of this consonant:

• Its manner of articulation is plosive or stop, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract.
• Its place of articulation is dental which means it is articulated with the tongue on either the lower or the upper teeth, or both.
• Its phonation type is voiced, which means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the center of the tongue, rather than the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

In English

English does not have the voiced dental plosive, but if it is spoken as a replacement for /d/ (e.g. by a non-native speaker), it is readily recognized as /d/, and the difference may go unnoticed.

In other languages