IPA reference · consonant
d — voiced alveolar plosive
The voiced counterpart of /t/.
Also called: voiced alveolar stop, d sound
How to make the voiced alveolar plosive
Tongue tip seals at the ridge (or the teeth, depending on the language) with voicing throughout.
English reference points: dog, ladder. If you speak English natively you already produce this sound — the work is recognising it and placing it where the target language wants it.
Languages that use it
Sounds it gets confused with
Most pronunciation errors are not random — they are a substitution of the nearest sound the speaker already owns. These are the usual substitutions for d, and each one is a minimal-pair drill waiting to happen.
Greek δ and Spanish intervocalic d are fricatives, not stops.
What this means for learners
Brazilian Portuguese palatalises /d/ before /i/ into /dʒ/, so *dia* is close to "jee-a".
Teaching this sound
Describing a sound in words gets a student roughly half the way there. The other half is hearing it produced correctly, immediately after producing it incorrectly, with both versions available to replay. That is the argument for recording during the lesson rather than after it: the student leaves with your model of d attached to the actual words they got wrong, not to an abstract chart.
Frequently asked questions
What sound does the IPA symbol d make?
d is the voiced alveolar plosive. The voiced counterpart of /t/. In English you can hear it in: dog, ladder.
How do you pronounce d?
Tongue tip seals at the ridge (or the teeth, depending on the language) with voicing throughout.
Which languages have the voiced alveolar plosive?
Among the languages covered here: Italian (dove, “where”); Polish (dom, “house”).
What is the difference between d and ð?
Greek δ and Spanish intervocalic d are fricatives, not stops.