Click consonant

The enclosed pocket of air is rarefied by a sucking action of the tongue (in technical terminology, clicks have a lingual ingressive airstream mechanism).

The only non-African language known to have clicks as regular speech sounds is Damin, a ritual code once used by speakers of Lardil in Australia.

In Gciriku, for example, the European loanword tomate (tomato) appears as cumáte with a click [ǀ], though it begins with a t in all neighbouring languages.

In a number of languages ranging from the central Mediterranean to Iran,[8] a bare dental click release accompanied by tipping the head upwards signifies "no".

This sound starts off as a typical click, but the action is reversed and it is the rear velar or uvular closure that is released, drawing in air from the throat and nasal passages.

Speakers of Gan Chinese from Ningdu county, as well as speakers of Mandarin from Beijing and Jilin and presumably people from other parts of the country, produce flapped nasal clicks in nursery rhymes with varying degrees of competence, in the words for 'goose' and 'duck', both of which begin with /ŋ/ in Gan and until recently began with /ŋ/ in Mandarin as well.

Most languages of the Khoesan families (Tuu, Kxʼa and Khoe) have four click types: { ǀ ǁ ǃ ǂ } or variants thereof, though a few have three or five, the last supplemented with either bilabial { ʘ } or retroflex { 𝼊 }.

As noted above, clicks necessarily involve at least two closures, which in some cases operate partially independently: an anterior articulation traditionally represented by the special click symbol in the IPA—and a posterior articulation traditionally transcribed for convenience as oral or nasal, voiced or voiceless, though such features actually apply to the entire consonant.

The size of click inventories ranges from as few as three (in Sesotho) or four (in Dahalo), to dozens in the Kxʼa and Tuu (Northern and Southern Khoisan) languages.

The five click places of articulation with dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are labial ʘ, dental ǀ, palatal ("palato-alveolar") ǂ, (post)alveolar ("retroflex") ǃ and lateral ǁ.

In most languages, the alveolar and palatal types are abrupt; that is, they are sharp popping sounds with little frication (turbulent airflow).

The labial, dental and lateral types, on the other hand, are typically noisy: they are longer, lip- or tooth-sucking sounds with turbulent airflow, and are sometimes called affricates.

The labial click /ʘ/ is different from what many people associate with a kiss: the lips are pressed more-or-less flat together, as they are for a [p] or an [m], not rounded as they are for a [w].

Most Khoisan languages, on the other hand (with the notable exceptions of Naro and Sandawe), use a more iconic system based on the pipe ⟨|⟩.

This is because a click such as [ɢ͡ǀ] was analysed as a voiced uvular rear articulation [ɢ] pronounced simultaneously with the forward ingressive release [ǀ].

In practical orthography, the voicing or nasalisation is sometimes given the anterior place of articulation: dc for ᶢǀ and mʘ for ᵑʘ, for example.

These are (bi)labial affricated ʘ, or "bilabial"; laminal denti-alveolar affricated ǀ, or "dental"; apical (post)alveolar plosive ǃ, or "alveolar"; laminal palatal plosive ǂ, or "palatal"; laminal palatal affricated ǂᶴ (known only from Ekoka !Kung); subapical postalveolar 𝼊, or "retroflex" (only known from Central !Kung and possibly Damin); and apical (post)alveolar lateral ǁ, or "lateral".

[17] An extended dental click with lip pursing or compression ("sucking-teeth"), variable in sound and sometimes described as intermediate between [ǀ] and [ʘ], is found across West Africa, the Caribbean and into the United States.

There is a great variety of click manners, both simplex and complex, the latter variously analysed as consonant clusters or contours.

Nakagawa (1996) describes the extended clicks in Gǀwi as consonant clusters, sequences equivalent to English st or pl, whereas Miller (2011) analyses similar sounds in several languages as click–non-click contours, where a click transitions into a pulmonic or ejective articulation within a single segment, analogous to how English ch and j transition from occlusive to fricative but still behave as unitary sounds.

Contour clicks are restricted to southern Africa, but are very common there: they are found in all members of the Tuu, Kxʼa and Khoe families, as well as in the Bantu language Yeyi.

[note 4] The homorganic and heterorganic affricated ejective clicks do not contrast in any known language, but are judged dissimilar enough to keep separate.

Under each language are the orthography (in italics, with old forms in parentheses), the researchers' transcription (in ⟨angle brackets⟩), or allophonic variation (in [brackets]).

DoBeS analyses most Taa clicks as clusters, leaving nine basic manners (marked with asterisks in the table).

This comes close to Miller's distinction between simple and contour clicks, shaded light and medium grey in the table.

The rear articulation of the alveolar clicks, however, is several centimetres further back, and involves a different set of muscles in the uvular region.

This makes the transition required for [ǃi] much more complex and the timing more difficult than the shallower and more forward tongue position of the palatal clicks.

[26] However, this conclusion relies on several dubious assumptions (see Hadza language), and most linguists[citation needed] assume that clicks, being quite complex consonants, arose relatively late in human history.

For example, the East Kalahari languages have lost clicks from a large percentage of their vocabulary, presumably due to Bantu influence.

[28] Lucy Lloyd reported that after long contact with the Khoi and San, it was difficult for her to refrain from using clicks when speaking English.