Consonants made with non-pulmonic airstream mechanisms

Clicks

The enclosed cavity for the production of a ‘click’ is created in the mouth. The back closure is formed by raising the back of the tongue against the soft palate (velum), and the front closure is formed somewhere more front in the mouth (e.g. alveolar ridge). The lowering of the body of the tongue rarefies the air, and when the front closure is removed, the air is sucked into the mouth. The result is a clicking sound; ‘tsk-tsk’ is one that we hear for disapproval in English. Since the airflow is inward, clicks are known as sounds made with velaric ingressive airstream mechanism. Clicks, as speech sounds, are confined to languages of southern Africa. To symbolize clicks, we find the following: [ʘ] bilabial, [|] dental, [!] post-alveolar, and [||] alveolar lateral.