IPA reference · consonant
t — voiceless alveolar plosive
The tongue tip seals against the alveolar ridge and releases without voicing.
Also called: voiceless alveolar stop, t sound
How to make the voiceless alveolar plosive
Tongue tip to the bumpy ridge behind the upper teeth. Note that English makes this at the ridge, while French, Spanish, Italian and Russian make it further forward against the teeth.
English reference points: top, stop. 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 t, and each one is a minimal-pair drill waiting to happen.
The dental version is made against the teeth, not the ridge — the difference is audible in Romance and Slavic languages.
Hindi and other Indo-Aryan languages contrast dental and retroflex; English /t/ sits between them.
What this means for learners
English /t/ is a compromise articulation. Moving it forward to the teeth is the single cheapest improvement to a French, Italian or Spanish accent.
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 t attached to the actual words they got wrong, not to an abstract chart.
Frequently asked questions
What sound does the IPA symbol t make?
t is the voiceless alveolar plosive. The tongue tip seals against the alveolar ridge and releases without voicing. In English you can hear it in: top, stop.
How do you pronounce t?
Tongue tip to the bumpy ridge behind the upper teeth. Note that English makes this at the ridge, while French, Spanish, Italian and Russian make it further forward against the teeth.
Which languages have the voiceless alveolar plosive?
Among the languages covered here: French (table, “table”); Russian (там, “there”).
What is the difference between t and t̪?
The dental version is made against the teeth, not the ridge — the difference is audible in Romance and Slavic languages.