Dental consonant
A dental consonant is a consonant articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , , and in some languages. Dentals are distinguished from other groups, such as alveolar consonants, in which the tongue contacts the gum ridge. Dental consonants share acoustic similarity and in Latin script are generally written with consistent symbols (e.g. "t", "d", "n"). In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the diacritic for dental consonant is . Cross-linguistically. For many languages, such as Albanian, Irish and Russian, velarization is generally associated with more dental articulations of coronal consonants. Thus, velarized consonants, such as Albanian , tend to  be dental or denti-alveolar, and non-velarized consonants tend to be retracted to an alveolar position. Sanskrit, Hindustani and all other Indo-Aryan languages have an entire set of dental stops that occur phonemically as voiced and voiceless and with or without aspiration. The nasal also exists but is quite alveolar and apical in articulation. To native speakers, the English alveolar and sound more like the corresponding retroflex consonants of their languages than like dentals. Spanish and are denti-alveolar, while and are prototypically alveolar but assimilate to the place of articulation of a following consonant. Likewise, Italian , , , are  denti-alveolar (, , , and respectively) and and become denti-alveolar before a following dental consonant. Although denti-alveolar consonants are often described as dental, it is the point of contact farthest to the back that is most relevant, defines the maximum acoustic space of resonance and gives a characteristic sound to a consonant. In French, the contact that is farthest back is alveolar or sometimes slightly pre-alveolar. Occurrence. Dental/denti-alveolar consonants as transcribed by the International Phonetic Alphabet include: