FricativeA fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of [f]; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in the case of German [x] (the final consonant of Bach); or the side of the tongue against the molars, in the case of Welsh [ɬ] (appearing twice in the name Llanelli). This turbulent airflow is called frication. A particular subset of fricatives are the sibilants.
Denti-alveolar consonantIn linguistics, a denti-alveolar consonant or dento-alveolar consonant is a consonant that is articulated with a flat tongue against the alveolar ridge and the upper teeth, such as /t/ and /d/ in languages such as French, Italian and Spanish. That is, a denti-alveolar consonant is (pre)alveolar and laminal rather than purely dental. Although denti-alveolar consonants are often labeled as "dental" because only the forward contact with the teeth is visible, the point of contact of the tongue that is farthest back is most relevant, as it defines the maximum acoustic space of resonance and gives a characteristic sound to a consonant.
Coronal consonantCoronals are consonants articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue. Among places of articulation, only the coronal consonants can be divided into as many articulation types: apical (using the tip of the tongue), laminal (using the blade of the tongue), domed (with the tongue bunched up), or subapical (using the underside of the tongue) as well as different postalveolar articulations (some of which also involve the back of the tongue as an articulator): palato-alveolar, alveolo-palatal and retroflex.
Australian Aboriginal languagesThe Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intelligible varieties) up to possibly 363. The Indigenous languages of Australia comprise numerous language families and isolates, perhaps as many as 13, spoken by the Indigenous peoples of mainland Australia and a few nearby islands.
AffricateAn affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. English has two affricate phonemes, /t͡ʃ/ and /d͡ʒ/, often spelled ch and j, respectively. The English sounds spelled "ch" and "j" (broadly transcribed as [t͡ʃ] and [d͡ʒ] in the IPA), German and Italian z [t͡s] and Italian z [d͡z] are typical affricates, and sounds like these are fairly common in the world's languages, as are other affricates with similar sounds, such as those in Polish and Chinese.
Palato-alveolar consonantIn phonetics, palato-alveolar or palatoalveolar consonants are postalveolar consonants, nearly always sibilants, that are weakly palatalized with a domed (bunched-up) tongue. They are common sounds cross-linguistically and occur in English words such as ship and chip. The fricatives are transcribed ʃ (voiceless) and ʒ (voiced) in the International Phonetic Alphabet, while the corresponding affricates are tʃ (voiceless) and dʒ (voiced).
