The voiceless retroflex plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ʈ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is t`. Like all the retroflex consonants, the IPA symbol is formed by adding a rightward pointing hook extending from the bottom of the symbol used for the equivalent alveolar consonant, in this case the voiceless alveolar plosive which has the symbol t. If lowercase letter t in the font used already has a rightward pointing hook, then ʈ is distinguished from t by extending the righward pointing hook below the baseline as a descender. Compare t and ʈ.
Features
Features of the voiceless retroflex plosive:
Standard English does not have the voiceless retroflex plosive. However, it is common in some dialects spoken by non-native speakers. For example, in Indian English, the sound /t/ is often realized as [ʈ]. This difference may be fairly hard for speakers of other varieties of English to detect.
In other languages
In many dialects of Swedish, the combination 'rt' after a long vowel (e.g., mört) may be pronounced as [ʈ].
External links
See also
