Postalveolar consonant in the context of "Alveolar consonant"

Voiced alveolar and dental plosives (or stops) are a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiced dental, alveolar, and postalveolar plosives is ⟨d⟩ (although the symbol ⟨d̪⟩ can be used to distinguish the dental plosive, and ⟨d̠⟩ the postalveolar).

There are only a few languages that distinguish dental and alveolar stops, among them Kota, Toda, Venda and some Irish dialects.

A voiced alveolar nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in numerous spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar nasals is ⟨n⟩.

The vast majority of languages have either an alveolar or dental nasal. There are a few languages that lack either sound but have [m], such as Yoruba, Palauan, and colloquial Samoan (however, these languages all have [ŋ]. An example of a language without [n] and [ŋ] is Edo). There are some languages (e.g. Rotokas) that lack both [m] and [n].

Voiceless alveolar and dental plosives (or stops) are a type of consonantal sound used in almost all spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiceless dental, alveolar, and postalveolar plosives is ⟨t⟩. The voiceless dental plosive can be distinguished with the underbridge diacritic, ⟨t̪⟩ and the postalveolar with a retraction line, ⟨t̠⟩, and the extIPA has a double underline diacritic which can be used to explicitly specify an alveolar pronunciation, ⟨t͇⟩.

The [t] sound is a very common sound cross-linguistically. Most languages have at least a plain [t], and some distinguish more than one variety. Some languages without a [t] are colloquial Samoan (which also lacks an [n]), Abau, and Nǁng of South Africa.

Voiced alveolar fricatives are consonantal sounds. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents these sounds depends on whether a sibilant or non-sibilant fricative is being described.

• The symbol for an alveolar sibilant is ⟨z⟩. The IPA letter ⟨z⟩ is not normally used for dental or postalveolar sibilants in narrow transcription unless modified by a diacritic (⟨z̪⟩ and ⟨z̠⟩ respectively).
• The IPA symbol for an alveolar non-sibilant fricative is derived by means of diacritics; it can be ⟨ð̠⟩ or ⟨ɹ̝⟩.

A caron (/ˈkærən/ KARR-ən) or háček (/ˈhɑːtʃɛk, ˈhætʃɛk, ˈheɪtʃɛk/ HAH-chek, HATCH-ek, HAY-chek, plural háčeks or háčky), is a diacritic mark (◌̌) placed over certain letters in the orthography of some languages, to indicate a change of the related letter's pronunciation.Typographers tend to use the term caron, while linguists prefer the Czech word háček.

The symbol is common in the Baltic, Slavic, Finnic, Samic and Berber language families.Its use differs according to the orthographic rules of a language. In most Slavic and other European languages it indicates present or historical palatalization (e → ě; [e] → [ʲe]), iotation, or postalveolar articulation (c → č; [ts] → [tʃ]). In Salishan languages, it often represents a uvular consonant (x → x̌; [x] → [χ]). When placed over vowel symbols, the caron can indicate a contour tone, for instance the falling and then rising tone in the Pinyin romanization of Mandarin Chinese. It is also used to decorate symbols in mathematics, where it is often pronounced /ˈtʃɛk/ ("check").

A voiceless alveolar lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages.

The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiceless dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral fricatives is [ɬ]. The symbol [ɬ] is called "belted l" and is distinct from "l with tilde", [ɫ], which transcribes a different sound – the velarized (or pharynɡealized) alveolar lateral approximant, often called "dark L".