A
dental consonant is a
consonant articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , , , and in some languages. Dentals are primarily distinguished from sounds in which contact is made with the
tongue and the
gum ridge, as in English (
see Alveolar consonant), due to the acoustic similarity of the sounds and the fact that in the Roman alphabet they are generally written using the same symbols (
t,
d,
n, and so on).