Voiced Dental Fricative

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The voiced dental fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is D. The voiced dental fricative occurs in English, and it is the sound denoted by the letters "th" in this and the. It is different from the "th" sound in thing and bath, which is the voiceless dental fricative. The dental fricatives are often called "interdental" because they are often produced with the tongue between the upper and lower teeth, and not just against the back of the teeth, as they are with other dental consonants. Features of this consonant:

In English

In Old English, the letters and were used interchangeably for this sound and the voiceless dental fricative, but they have been dropped from modern usage in preference for the 'th' digraph. Although the same digraph is used for the voiced and voiceless forms, these sounds are not interchangeable in spoken English.

Other languages

Icelandic retains the letter for this sound, and Welsh uses the digraph 'dd'. Many commonly spoken languages, such as German, French, Japanese, and Chinese, lack this sound. Native speakers of those languages sometimes have difficulty enunciating or distinguishing it, and replace it with a voiced alveolar fricative or a voiced dental plosive.

 

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labiodental approximant
labiodental nasal
alveolar lateral approximant
lateral alveolar click
alveolar lateral flap
palatal lateral approximant
retroflex lateral approximant
velar lateral approximant
voiced alveolar lateral fricative
voiceless alveolar lateral fricative
palatal approximant
palatal click
palatal ejective
palatal nasal
postalveolar click
retroflex approximant
retroflex flap
retroflex nasal
uvular ejective
uvular nasal
uvular trill
velar approximant
velar ejective
voiced alveolar fricative
voiced alveolo palatal fricative
voiced bilabial fricative
voiced dental plosive
voiced epiglottal fricative
voiced glottal fricative
voiced labiodental fricative
voiced palatal fricative
voiced palatal plosive
voiced pharyngeal fricative
voiced postalveolar fricative
voiced retroflex fricative
voiced retroflex plosive
voiced uvular fricative
voiced uvular plosive
voiced velar fricative
voiceless alveolar fricative
voiceless alveolo palatal fricative
voiceless bilabial fricative
voiceless dental fricative
voiceless epiglottal fricative