English consonants

DENTALS

• English has a pair of fricatives at another place of articulation where there are no English stops. Try putting your tongue between your teeth or against the back of your upper teeth and then expelling air from your mouth. Again if the contact is not too tight, some air should pass between your tongue and your teeth, generating turbulence that results in the consonant that appears at the beginning of the word thing and at the end of the word both. The place of articulation for this consonant is called dental place of articulation. The symbol for the voiceless dental fricative is /θ/, so the pronunciation of the word both is written /boθ/. English also has the corresponding voiced phoneme; it is the initial consonant in the word this and the final consonant in the word bathe. It is symbolized by /ð/ in this book, so the pronunciation of bathe is written /beð/.