Obstruent that is voiceless, unaspirated and unglottalized
Not to be confused with fortis and lenis consonants.
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Tenuis
◌˭
Encoding
Entity (decimal)
˭
Unicode (hex)
U+02ED
In linguistics, a tenuis consonant (/ˈtɛn.juːɪs/ or /ˈtɛnuːɪs/)[2] is an obstruent that is voiceless, unaspirated and unglottalized.
In other words, it has the "plain" phonation of [p,t,ts,tʃ,k] with a voice onset time close to zero (a zero-VOT consonant), as Spanish p, t, ch, k or English p, t, k after s (spy, sty, sky).
For most languages, the distinction is relevant only for stops and affricates. However, a few languages have analogous series for fricatives. Mazahua, for example, has ejective, aspirated, and voiced fricatives /sʼsʰz/ alongside tenuis /s/, parallel to stops /ɗtʼtʰd/ alongside tenuis /t/.
Many click languages have tenuis click consonants alongside voiced, aspirated, and glottalized series.
^"tenuis". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
^The latter to better distinguish from 'tenuous'. Plural: tenues, /ˈtɛn.juːiːz/ or /ˈtɛnuːiːz/.[1]
In linguistics, a tenuisconsonant (/ˈtɛn.juːɪs/ or /ˈtɛnuːɪs/) is an obstruent that is voiceless, unaspirated and unglottalized. In other words, it has...
The voiceless or more precisely tenuis dental click is a click consonant found primarily among the languages of southern Africa. The symbol in the International...
The voiceless or more precisely tenuis lateral click is a click consonant found primarily among the languages of southern Africa. The symbol in the International...
symbol: ⟨ʰp⟩ represents the preaspirated bilabial stop. Unaspirated or tenuisconsonants are occasionally marked with the modifier letter for unaspiration...
tenuis bilabial click is a click consonant found in some languages of southern Africa. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet for a tenuis...
The voiceless or more precisely tenuis (post)alveolar click is a click consonant found primarily among the languages of southern Africa. The symbol in...
The voiceless or more precisely tenuis palatal click is a click consonant found primarily among the languages of southern Africa. The symbol in the International...
particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuisconsonants. Some languages have glottalized sonorants with creaky voice that...
every aspirated consonant exhibits allophonic variation. Each aspirated consonant can be converted into the corresponding tenuisconsonant. This can be called...
precisely tenuis retroflex click is a rare click consonant. In practical orthography, an ad hoc symbol ⟨‼⟩ is used for the retroflex clicks; a tenuis click...
a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion...
§ Brackets and transcription delimiters. In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure...
Click consonants, or clicks, are speech sounds that occur as consonants in many languages of Southern Africa and in three languages of East Africa. Examples...
up tenuis in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Tenuis, weak or slender in Latin, and a species in zoology, may refer to: language Tenuisconsonant, a stop...
only for some speakers. Otherwise, they tend to be tenuis (plain) stops. Similarly, the tenuis (plain) clicks are often glottalised, with a long voice...
following tables present pulmonic and non-pulmonic consonants. In the IPA, a pulmonic consonant is a consonant made by obstructing the glottis (the space between...
categories: pulmonic consonants, non-pulmonic consonants, and vowels. Pulmonic consonant letters are arranged singly or in pairs of voiceless (tenuis) and voiced...
pulmonic consonants. See glottalic consonants and click consonants for more information on the distribution of nonpulmonic consonants. Ejective consonant Implosive...
as the p in pat, with a corresponding lenis consonant, such as the b in bat. Fortis and lenis consonants may be distinguished by tenseness or other characteristics...
writing system for the Korean language. The letters for the five basic consonants reflect the shape of the speech organs used to pronounce them, and they...
pharyngeal consonant is a consonant that is articulated primarily in the pharynx. Some phoneticians distinguish upper pharyngeal consonants, or "high"...
⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. Dorsal consonants are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue (the dorsum). They include...
increase the phonetic contrast between aspirated or ejective and tenuisconsonants. According to Kehrein (2002), no language contrasts a non-sibilant...
Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars...
retroflex consonants, ʈ ɖ ʂ ʐ ɳ ɻ ɽ ɭ. The IPA diacritics are also featural. The Fraser alphabet used for Lisu rotates the letters for the tenuisconsonants ꓑ...
A dental consonant is a consonant articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as /θ/, /ð/. In some languages, dentals are distinguished from...
as common as tenuis ("plain") fricatives. Other phonations are common in languages that have those phonations in their stop consonants. However, phonemically...
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