In phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds (phones): their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory perception, and neurophysiological status. Phonology, on the other hand, is concerned with abstract, grammatical, retroflex consonants are consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are [p], pronounced with the lips; [t], pronounced with the front of the tongue; [k], pronounced with the back of the tongue; [h], pronounced in the throat; [f] and [s], pronounced by forcing air through a sounds used in some languages Language is a term most commonly used to refer to so-called "natural languages" — the spoken forms of communication ubiquitous among humankind. By extension the term also refers to the type of thought process which creates and uses language. Essential to both meanings is the systematic creation, maintenance and use of systems of. (They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants, especially in Indology Indology is the academic study of the languages and literature, history and cultures of the Indian subcontinent , and as such a subset of Asian studies.) The tongue articulates with the roof of the oral cavity behind the alveolar ridge An alveolar ridge is one of the two jaw ridges either on the roof of the mouth between the upper teeth and the hard palate or on the bottom of the mouth behind the lower teeth. The alveolar ridges contain the sockets (alveoli) of the teeth. They can be felt with the tongue in the area right above the top teeth or below the bottom teeth. Its, and may even be curled back to touch the palate The palate is the roof of the mouth in humans and other mammals. It separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity. A similar structure is found in crocodilians, but, in most other tetrapods, the oral and nasal cavities are not truly separate. The palate is divided into two parts, the anterior bony hard palate, and the posterior fleshy soft or uvula The uvula is the conic projection from the posterior edge of the middle of the soft palate, composed of connective tissue containing a number of racemose glands, and some muscular fibers (musculus uvulae): that is, they are articulated in the postalveolar Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate to palatal Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate . Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex region of the mouth.
Retroflex consonants, like other coronals Coronal consonants are articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue. Only the coronal consonants can be divided into apical , laminal (using the tongue blade), domed (with the tongue bunched up), or sub-apical (with the tongue curled back), as well as a few rarer orientations, because only the front of the tongue has such dexterity, come in several varieties, depending on the shape of the tongue. The tongue may be flat, with the blade of the tongue (the top surface of the tongue near the tip) approaching or touching the roof of the mouth, as in Polish Polish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions. Polish-speakers use the language in a uniform manner throughout most of Poland cz, sz, ż (rz), dż and Mandarin The latter grouping is defined and used mainly by linguists, and is not commonly used outside of academic circles as a self-description. Instead, when asked to describe the spoken form they are using, Chinese speaking a form of non-Standard Mandarin will describe the variant that they are speaking, for example Southwestern Mandarin or Northeastern zh, ch, sh, r. This is termed laminal A laminal consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, which is the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue on the top. This contrasts with apical consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the tongue apex only. This distinction applies only to coronal consonants, (laminal retroflex). Or they may be pronounced with the tip of the tongue, as in Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: हिन्दी or हिंदी, IAST: Hindī, IPA: [ˈɦɪndiː] ) is the name given to various Indo-Aryan languages, dialects, and language registers spoken in northern and central India, Pakistan, Fiji, Mauritius, and Suriname. Standard Hindi is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India, one of the official language. This is termed apical An apical consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the apex of the tongue (i.e. the tip of the tongue). This contrasts with laminal consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the blade of the tongue (which is just behind the apex) (apical retroflex). Finally, the tongue may be curled back so that the underside touches the alveolar or pre-palatal region, as in many of the Dravidian languages The Dravidian family of languages includes approximately 85 languages, spoken by around 200 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and overseas in other countries such as Malaysia and Singapore. Among them. This is termed subapical (subapical retroflex).[1]
The consonants commonly called postalveolar Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate, or more precisely palato-alveolar, such as English sh and ch, as well as the alveolo-palatals In phonetics, alveolo-palatal consonants are palatalized postalveolar fricatives, articulated with the blade of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, and the body of the tongue raised toward the palate. They are similar to palato-alveolar and retroflex fricatives, but are laminal rather than apical or sub-apical as the retroflex fricatives are,, such as Mandarin q, j, x, are also pronounced in the postalveolar region. However, they differ from retroflex consonants in having an additional secondary articulation Secondary articulation refers to co-articulated consonants where the two articulations are not of the same manner. The approximant-like secondary articulation is weaker than the primary, and colors it rather than obscuring it. For example, the voiceless labialized velar plosive [kʷ] has only a single stop articulation, velar [k], with a of palatalization The second may be the result of the first, but they often differ. A vowel may "palatalize" a consonant , but the result might not be a palatalized consonant in the phonetic sense (sense 2), or the phonetically palatalized (sense 2) consonant may occur irrespective of front vowels. The consonants commonly called palatal Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate . Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex are pronounced in the palatal region like the subapical retroflexes, but they touch the palate with the back of the tongue, not the tip. (That is, they are dorsal, or more precisely dorso-palatal, rather than coronal consonants.)
In other words, retroflex consonants include various types of coronal consonants articulated behind the alveolar ridge which do not have the secondary articulation of palatalization.
Occurrence
Although data is not precise, about 20 percent of the world's languages contain retroflex consonants of one sort or another[2]. About half of these possess only retroflex continuants A continuant is a sound produced with an incomplete closure of the vocal tract. That is, any sound except a stop . An affricate is considered to be a complex segment, composed of both a stop and a continuant, with most of the rest having both stops and continuants. Retroflex consonants are concentrated in the Indo-Aryan languages Geographical distribution of the major Indo-Aryan languages and the Dravidian languages The Dravidian family of languages includes approximately 85 languages, spoken by around 200 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and overseas in other countries such as Malaysia and Singapore. Among them of the Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent, also Indian Subcontinent and other terms, is a region of the Asian continent on the Indian tectonic plate south of the Himalayas, forming a land mass which extends southward into the Indian Ocean.
The Nuristani languages of eastern Afghanistan The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is a landlocked country in south-central Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan in the south and east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the north, and China in the far northeast. In addition; India claims a border with Afghanistan at the eastern Wakhan corridor as part of its claim on the also have retroflex consonants. Among Eastern Iranian languages, they are common in Pashto Pashto , also known as Afghani, and Pathani, is an Indo-European language spoken primarily in Afghanistan and western Pakistan. Pashto belongs to the Eastern Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian language family. The number of Pashto speakers is estimated to be about 40 million.[citation needed] The Constitution of Afghanistan declares that Pashto is, Wakhi Wakhi is an Indo-European language in the sub-branch of Southeastern Iranian languages and is intimately related to other Pamir languages and Pashto, Sanglechi-Ishkashimi, and Munji-Yidgha. They also occur in some other Asian languages such as Mandarin Chinese The latter grouping is defined and used mainly by linguists, and is not commonly used outside of academic circles as a self-description. Instead, when asked to describe the spoken form they are using, Chinese speaking a form of non-Standard Mandarin will describe the variant that they are speaking, for example Southwestern Mandarin or Northeastern, Javanese Javanese language is the language of the people in the central and eastern parts of the island of Java, in Indonesia. In addition, there are also some pockets of Javanese speakers in the northern coast of western Java. It is the native language of more than 75,500,000 people and Vietnamese Vietnamese , is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant. The other major concentration is in the indigenous languages of Australia The Indigenous Australian languages comprise several language families and isolates native to Australia and a few nearby islands, but by convention excluding Tasmania. The relationships between these languages are not clear at present, although substantial progress has been made in recent decades and the Western Pacific (notably New Caledonia New Caledonia (French: officially: Nouvelle-Calédonie; colloquially: Calédonie; popular nickname: (le) Caillou), has a special status of sui generis collectivity of France. It is located in the subregion of Melanesia in the southwest Pacific. It comprises a main island (Grande Terre), the Loyalty Islands, and several smaller islands). Here, most languages have retroflex plosives, nasal A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the lips or tongue. Rarely, other types of consonants may be nasalized and approximants Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no turbulence. This class of sounds includes lateral.
Retroflex consonants are relatively rare among European languages, occurring in Sardinian Sardinian is the collective name of the vernacular linguistic varieties spoken in most of the island of Sardinia, Italy. It is considered the most conservative of the Romance languages in terms of phonology and is noted for its Paleosardinian substratum, in Sicilian Sicilian is a Romance language. Its dialects make up the Italiano Meridionale-estremo language group, which are spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands; in southern and central Calabria (where it is called Southern Calabro); in the southern parts of Apulia, the Salento (where it is known as Salentino); and Campania, on the Italian, some Italian dialects such as Calabrian The primary languages of the Calabria region are Standard Italian and many regional dialects of the Italo-Dalmatian group collectively known as Calabrian . In addition, there is a significant Calabrian version of the Griko language and pockets of Occitan and Arbëresh, Salentino and Lunigianese Lunigiana is an historical territory of Italy, which today falls within the provinces of La Spezia and Massa Carrara. Its borders derive from the ancient Roman settlement, later the medieval diocese of Luni, which no longer exists, in Swedish Swedish ( svenska ) is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the coast and on the Åland islands. It is to a considerable extent mutually intelligible with Norwegian and to a lesser extent with Danish (see especially "Classification"). Along and Norwegian Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants (see Danish language) (where a sequence of r plus a coronal consonant may be replaced by the coronal's retroflex equivalent, e.g. the name Martin would be pronounced [maʈin]. Also, this is sometimes done for several consonants in a row after an r - Hornstull is pronounced [hoɳʂʈul]). The retroflex approximant The retroflex approximant is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɻ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r\`. The IPA symbol is a turned lowercase letter r with a rightward hook protruding from the lower right of the letter /ɻ/ is an allophone In phonetics, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds (or phones) used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, [pʰ] (as in pin) and [p] (as in spin) are allophones for the phoneme /p/ in the English language. Although a phoneme's allophones are all alternative pronunciations for a phoneme, the specific allophones of the alveolar approximant The alveolar approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents alveolar and postalveolar approximants is ‹ɹ›, a lowercase letter r rotated 180 degrees; the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ‹r\› /ɹ/ in many dialects of American English American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two thirds of native speakers of English live in the United States, particularly in the Midwestern The Midwestern United States is one of the four geographic regions within the United States of America used by the United States Census Bureau in its reporting United States ^ b. English is the de facto language of American government and the sole language spoken at home by 80% of Americans age five and older. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language. Polish and Russian possess retroflex sibilants A sibilant is a type of fricative or affricate consonant, made by directing a jet of air through a narrow channel in the vocal tract towards the sharp edge of the teeth. Strident refers to the perceptual intensity of the sound of a sibilant consonant. A strident sound could be described as harsh, insistent, and discordant. In phonetics and, but no stops or liquids at this place of articulation. Retroflex consonants are largely absent from indigenous languages of the Americas with the exception of the extreme south of South America, an area in Southwestern US The Southwestern United States is a region defined in different ways by different sources. Broad definitions include nearly a quarter of the United States, including California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas. Narrowly defined, the "core" Southwest might include only Arizona and New Mexico, with parts of as in Hopi Hopi is a Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Hopi people of northeastern Arizona, USA, although today some Hopi are monolingual English speakers and Papago, and in Alaska and the Yukon Territory as in the Athabaskan languages Gwichʼin and Hän. In African languages retroflex consonants are also very rare, reportedly occurring in a few Nilo-Saharan languages. In southwest Ethiopia, phonemically distinctive retroflex consonants are found in Bench and Sheko, two contiguous, but not closely related, Omotic languages.[3]
There are several retroflex consonants not yet recognized by the IPA. For example, the Iwaidja language of northern Australia has a retroflex lateral flap [ɺ̢] as well as a retroflex tap [ɽ] and retroflex lateral approximant [ɭ]; and the Dravidian language Toda has a subapical retroflex lateral fricative [ɬ̢] and a retroflexed trill [ɽ͡r]. Because of the regularity of deriving retroflex symbols from their alveolar counterparts, people will occasionally use a font editor to create the appropriate symbols for such sounds. (Here they were written with diacritics.) The Ngad'a language of Flores has been reported to have a retroflex implosive [ᶑ], but in this case the expected symbol is coincidentally supported by Unicode. Subapical retroflex clicks occur in Central Juu and in Damin.[citation needed]
Retroflex consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:
| IPA | Description | Example | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Language | Orthography | IPA | Meaning | ||
| retroflex nasal | Swedish | Vänern | [vɛː.neɳ] | Vänern | |
| voiceless retroflex plosive | Hindi | टापू (ṭāpū) | [ʈɑpu] | island | |
| voiced retroflex plosive | Swedish | nord | [nuːɖ] | north | |
| voiceless retroflex fricative | Mandarin | 上海 (Shànghǎi) | [ʂɑ̂ŋ.xàɪ] | Shanghai | |
| voiced retroflex fricative | Russian Polish | жаба żaba | [ʐaba] | toad frog | |
| retroflex approximant | Tamil | தமிழ் (Tamil) | [t̪ɐmɨɻ] | Tamil | |
| retroflex lateral approximant | Swedish | Karlstad | [kʰɑːɭ.sta] | Karlstad | |
| retroflex flap | Hausa | shaara | [ʃáːɽa] | sweeping | |
| ɺ̢ | retroflex lateral flap | Pashto | ړوند | [ɺ̢und] | blind |
| ǃ˞ | (voiced) retroflex click | Central Juu | — | [ɡǃ˞ú] | water |
Note: In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the symbols for retroflex consonants are typically the same as for the alveolar consonants, but with the addition of a right-facing hook to the bottom of the symbol. Some linguists restrict these symbols for the "true" retroflex consonants with subapical palatal articulation, and use the alveolar symbols with the obsolete IPA underdot symbol for an apical post-alveolar articulation: [ṭ, ḍ, ṇ, ṣ, ẓ, ḷ, ɾ̣, ɹ̣]. Another solution, more in keeping with the official IPA, would be to use the rhotic diacritic for the apical retroflexes: [t˞, d˞, n˞, s˞, z˞, l˞, ɾ˞, ɹ˞]. Laminal retroflexes, as in Polish and Russian, are often transcribed with a retraction diacritic, as [s̱], etc. Otherwise they are typically but inaccurately transcribed as if they were palato-alveolar, as *[ʃ], etc.
See also
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