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IPA – number	178
IPA – text	ǃ
IPA – image
Entity	ǃ
X-SAMPA	!\
Kirshenbaum	S!
Sound sample (help·info)

The alveolar and postalveolar clicks are a family of click consonants found only in Africa and in the Damin ritual jargon of Australia.

The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the forward articulation of these sounds is ǃ. This must be combined with a symbol for the rear articulation to represent an actual speech sound. Attested (post)alveolar clicks include:

The last is what is heard in the sound sample at right, as non-native speakers tend to glottalize clicks to avoid nasalizing them.

The symbol is not an exclamation mark in origin, but rather a pipe with a subscript dot, the old diacritic for retroflex consonants.

Features of postalveolar clicks:

• The manner of articulation is a sharp, plosive-like release in southern Africa, but in Hadza they are frequently flapped, with the underside of the tip of the tongue striking the floor of the mouth after the release of the click; in some cases, the release is rather faint, and it is this sub-apical percussive sound that dominates.

The rear closure may be voiced, nasal, ejective, or affricate, and have any of several phonations.

• They are produced with two articulatory closures in the oral cavity. The forward place of articulation is alveolar or postalveolar, depending on the language, and apical, which means it is articulated with the tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridge or the roof of the mouth behind the alveolar ridge. (Damin had both articulations as separate phonemes.) The rear place of articulation may be either velar or uvular.
• (Post)alveolar clicks may be either oral or nasal, which means air is allowed to escape either through the mouth or the nose.
• They are central consonants, which means they are produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is velaric ingressive (AKA lingual ingressive), which means the pocket of air trapped between the two closures is rarefied by a "sucking" action of the tongue, rather than by the glottis or the lungs. The release of the forward closure produces the 'click' sound.

• List of phonetics topics