In linguistics, a "'denti-alveolar consonant "'( or "'dento-alveolar "') is a consonant that is articulated with a flat tongue against the alveolar ridge and upper teeth, such as and in languages such as Spanish and French.
42.
When a lamino-alveolar consonant or is followed by in the last syllable of a word, and the next word begins with, the word-initial is deleted and the two adjacent-sounds merge into a long, as in ?!'they all came'and ?!'not west '.
43.
Although this process is very common in the Southeast, in Ga�cho Portuguese the letters " s " and " z " are never pronounced as palato-alveolar consonants in coda position ( e . g ., pasto " pasture " is [ ?pa?tu ] in Rio de Janeiro, but [ ?pastu ] in Porto Alegre ).
44.
Although denti-alveolar consonants are often labeled as " dental ", because only the forward contact with the teeth is visible, it is the rear-most point of contact of the tongue that is most relevant, for this is what defines the maximum acoustic space of resonance and will give a consonant its characteristic sound.
45.
Dentals are usually distinguished from sounds in which contact is made with the tongue and the gum ridge, as in English ( see alveolar consonant ) because of the acoustic similarity of the sounds and the fact that in the Roman alphabet, they are generally written using the same symbols ( like " t ", " d ", " n " ).
46.
Some examples : a word cannot end in certain consonants, and cannot begin with some consonants including r-, l-and; -; there are two consonants for the dental n-which one should be used depends on whether the n occurs at the start of the word and on the letters around it . ( Historically, one n was pronounced as an alveolar consonant, as is still true in Malayalam .)
47.
Note the distinction between the laminal retroflex sounds " ( sz, | , cz, d | ) " and the corresponding alveolo-palatals " ( [ , z, , dz ) " both of these series sound similar to the English palato-alveolar consonants ( the " sh " and " ch " sounds and their alveolo-palatals are pronounced with the body of the tongue raised to the palate.
