Tongue blade in the context of "Voiced alveolar affricate"

Voiceless alveolar fricatives are a type of fricative consonant pronounced with the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge (gum line) just behind the teeth. This refers to a class of sounds, not a single sound. There are at least six types with significant perceptual differences:

• A voiceless alveolar sibilant [s] (the standard symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet or IPA) has a strong hissing sound, as the s in English sink. It is one of the most common sounds in the world.
• A voiceless denti-alveolar sibilant [s̄] (an ad hoc notation), also called apico-dental, has a weaker lisping sound like English th in thin. It occurs in Spanish dialects in southern Spain (eastern Andalusia).
• A voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant [s̠], and the subform apico-alveolar [s̺], or called grave, has a weak hushing sound reminiscent of retroflex fricatives. It is used in the languages of northern Iberia, like Asturleonese, Basque, Peninsular Spanish (excluding parts of Andalusia), Catalan, Galician, and Northern European Portuguese. A similar retracted sibilant form is also used in Dutch, Icelandic, some southern dialects of Swedish, Finnish, and Greek. The retracted "S" is also used in Amerindian languages such as Muscogee, Garifuna, and many varieties of Quechua. It was supposedly the standard sound of s in Classical Latin. Its sound is between [s] and [ʃ].
• A voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative [θ̠] or [θ͇], using the alveolar diacritic from the Extended IPA, is similar to the th in English thin. It occurs in Icelandic as well as an intervocalic and word-final allophone of English /t/ in dialects such as Hiberno-English and Scouse.
• A voiceless alveolar lateral fricative [ɬ] sounds like a voiceless, strongly articulated version of English l (somewhat like what the English cluster **hl would sound like) and is written as ll in Welsh.

The first three types are sibilants, meaning that they are made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth and have a piercing, perceptually prominent sound.

A voiceless alveolar affricate is a type of affricate consonant pronounced with the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge (gum line) just behind the teeth. There are several types with significant perceptual differences:

• The voiceless alveolar sibilant affricate [t͡s] is the most common type, similar to the ts in English cats.
• The voiceless alveolar non-sibilant affricate [t͡θ̠] or [t͡θ͇], using the alveolar diacritic from the Extended IPA, is somewhat similar to the th in some pronunciations of English eighth. It is found as a regional realization of the sequence /tr/ in some Sicilian dialects of Standard Italian.
• The voiceless alveolar lateral affricate [t͡ɬ] is found in certain languages, such as Cherokee, Mexican Spanish, and Nahuatl.
• The voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant affricate [t͡s̺], also called apico-alveolar or grave, has a weak hushing sound reminiscent of retroflex affricates. One language in which it is found is Basque, where it contrasts with a more conventional non-retracted laminal alveolar affricate.

A laminal consonant is a phone (speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue, in contact with upper lip, teeth, alveolar ridge, to possibly, as far back as the hard palate, although in the last contact may involve parts behind the blade as well. It is distinct from an apical consonant, produced by creating an obstruction with the tongue apex (tongue tip) only. Laminal is sometimes used exclusively for an articulation that involves only the blade of the tongue with the tip being lowered and apicolaminal for an articulation that involves both the blade of the tongue and the raised tongue tip. The distinction applies only to coronal consonants, which use the front of the tongue.