Talk:Laminal consonant

English consonants mostly apical? Wuuut?
The actual quote: "By this consideration the French coronals are alveolar, and differ from English alveolars primarily in being laminal rather than apical (that is, in French the tongue is flatter)." Off the top of my head... "between" or "true" or "murder"? Apical? --Dennis Valeev 12:02, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
 * That's right! English has both apical and laminal consonants. British English makes more use of the laminal ones. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.130.136.38 (talk) 21:25, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
 * As a native speaker of Inland Northern American English I can confirm /d/ and /t/ are entirely apical for me, including in your examples. I tried pronouncing them as laminals and was basically impossible (possibly because my dialect is solidly rhotic and I have syllabic [ɹ̠] for the vowels there). Dargueta (talk) 01:56, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Need of graphics and audio
The article would improve a lot by adding graphics (drawings with position of the tongue) and audio recordings comparing the different sounds discussed. GemmaMS 13:19, 4 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Still true, sadly, more than 10 years later! yoyo (talk) 16:01, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

european and canadian french
The article talks about "French" but does not specify which variety. As far as I can hear, there are important differences between European and Canadian French in what regards coronal stops. In broad terms, Paris French has the t further back, while Montreal French has it more to the front (whatever the precise description of the articulatory facts may be). This actually has consequences for English loanwords. "Three" for instance is "sree" in Paris, because the manner of articulation is preserved to the detriment of the poa. It is "tree" in Montreal (dental t), where the place of articulation is preserved, but not the manner.

Be this as it may, the article should be more explicit about what variety of French is meant. Jasy jatere (talk) 09:26, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Native languages of California?
The article says "...although some native languages of California make the distinction with stops as well..." Is California a western state in the United States or something else? I'm not aware a language that would have been used by one of the indigenous peoples of the Americas that was in use throughout the entire region now known as "California." None of the languages listed on California are native to the region. Maybe it means all of the indigenous languages used in the region? If so, a citation is needed. As it is - I suspect it's an extraordinary claim that contradicts this article which says "at least seven entirely unrelated language families are represented" and "For its size, California is linguistically the most diverse area of North America." Laminal consonants being a common thread have been mentioned, and also on Category:Indigenous languages of California, if that was the case.

I looked at California (disambiguation) but nothing jumps out as a region that would have a distinct native language. The article has said "California" for at least a couple of years. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 19:04, 14 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure I understand your confusion. Some of the native languages of the western state of California make the distinction. It's not claiming that all of them do, or that any of them were in use throughout the entire region. Cites and more specificity about which languages from which families would be nice, but what it says doesn't seem incorrect.--Prosfilaes (talk) 09:14, 14 October 2019 (UTC)