Dental nasal

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Sound sample (help·info)
IPA – number	116 + 408
IPA – text	n̪
IPA – image
Entity	n̪
X-SAMPA	`n_d`
Kirshenbaum	`n[`

The dental nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is n̪, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is n_d.

[edit] Features

Features of the dental nasal:

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 a nasal consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the nose.
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.

[edit] Found in

True dental consonants are relatively uncommon. In the Romance languages n is often called dental. However, the rearmost contact (which is what gives a consonant its distinctive sound) is actually alveolar, or perhaps denti-alveolar; the fact that the front of the tongue touches the teeth may be more visible, but is unimportant acoustically. The difference between the Romance languages and English is not so much where the tongue contacts the roof of the mouth, as which part of the tongue makes the contact. In English it is the tip of the tongue (such sounds are termed apical), whereas in the Romance languages it is the flat of the tongue just above the tip (such sounds are called laminal).

However, there are languages with true apical (or less commonly laminal) dental n. It is found in Dravidian languages such as Tamil and Malayalam. For example, in the Malayalam pronunciation of "Nārāyanan", the first "n" is dental (the second is retroflex and the third alveolar).